CloudBasedOffice

Quora Answer : Why do so many corporations use Windows for their internal use instead of Linux/Unix which would be cheaper and more secure?

Jan 22, 2019

This does actually mystify me quite a lot.

Not because I don't understand the problem of retraining / moving the workforce to the Linux desktop, but because 10 - 15 years ago there seemed to be a huge shift towards putting enterprise software behind web interfaces accessed via the browser.

I don't quite understand why that didn't work out. And why 99.9% of the software people use in work isn't now served up in the browser. Or why thin clients (or things like ChromeOS) didn't sweep Windows away.

It's not like we don't have massive investment in things like web frameworks and compile-to-Javascript languages. The ecosystem for developing in the browser is undoubtedly richer and more sophisticated today than the ecosystem for developing client-server apps in Windows.

So why does any corporation still buy a Windows desktop or laptop for bread-and-butter work?

I know Word and Excel etc. had huge lockin. But again, Google Docs has been around for 10 years. And you can do reasonable Word doc / Excel sheet handling in those. Plenty of people have written Office compatible software for iOS and Android in the last 10 years.

I assume that Microsoft have discounted Windows so much that it's effectively free (as in gratis) to the corporate world.