Re: if I'd start a new company
The operating expense thing is a good point, sometimes its better to have a monthly cash flow cost using office 365 written of as a service, than a big chunk going out on hardware. Been a while but once worked with a guy who ran a factory and was also a chartered accountant, he was always trying to reduce his monthly profit and write it off against costs, I could see him loving something like this as a monthly expense. (He considered himself an accountants accountant interpret that as you will).
Have to say as well it does have some uses like freeing up time, I was a bit no don't put everything in the cloud etc but in general as long as you make sure that's not your only data storage and you back up like you should then it does free some time for people to play with tech a bit, and not worry as much about day to day admin duties, our lot certainly use that time to do stuff that we think will work for our company and it seems OK to me. We also have people who contract for us and its quite nice to be able to expand and contract as needed relatively simply and bill it against a project that used them.
I still couldn't find myself wanting to really subscribe to something like a monthly office licence I'd rather just buy that software right out, but exchange online and the like has its uses.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
