A Retrospective: The State of Microsoft in Education

This article was first published five years ago, and it paints a damning picture of Microsoft’s future in schools. Just how did the company turn it all around?

This week I was reading through some articles that I wrote several years ago (this lockdown has strange effects) when one in particular stood out to me. This article, originally titled “The State of Microsoft in Education”, describes how far educational technology has come in the last half-decade. It describes the inevitable plummet into irrelevance of one of the worlds largest technology companies, and the maelstrom of innovation and competition that started just a few years ago and remains today.

Reading my words in 2020, I can feel the passion and anger at the lumbering behemoth, Microsoft, and their abject failure to provide anything innovative or new to support schools desperate to use technology for learning. Little was I to know that Microsoft, under the leadership of Satya Nadella, would develop from an immovable object into the lithe, panther like company it is today. Well, almost.

So, I thought it was fitting and poignant to revive this old article to see both how far edtech has come in the last five years, but also to celebrate old-man Microsoft’s renewed vigour and youthfulness, which has brought it back to the forefront of technology in schools.

When I wrote this article in 2015 Microsoft was a shadow of its former self, having failed repeatedly to evolve with the times. Apple was riding the success of the iPad as it flooded on a tidal wave into schools, and Google was just getting to grips with the Chromebook and Google Apps, laying the template which Microsoft would follow and overtake in the coming years.

But Microsoft, struggling with a clunky operating system in Windows 7, which barely integrated with any of its nascent cloud services, it looked like Microsoft was dead in the water.

How wrong I was.

So, here it is, unedited, in its original 2015 form.

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Microsoft has been a fixture in schools for the last twenty years, but with iPads, Chromebooks, and consumer tastes changing, how much longer do they have at the top?

Today, I attended a Microsoft seminar covering the latest developments in the Windows ecosystem. I know, but please keep reading. As I was listening to the speaker, who looked and sounded remarkably like Michael Caine, my mind drifted onto a topic that must be at the forefront of most school administrator’s minds for some time now — where does Microsoft fit into the modern school?

I spent a good portion of the presentation trying to formulate questions to which the response would have to be “you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” but the rest got me thinking, could we rebuild a school without Microsoft software or services?

A Broken Monopoly

When I first started working in schools, almost fourteen years ago, Microsoft was just becoming dominant in the enterprise. Some of my earliest work was transitioning away from systems like Novell and Lotus, and moving to Windows NT and Microsoft Office. Back then we were sowing the seeds for Microsoft’s stranglehold on schools that still, generally speaking, holds today.

Most secondary schools run Microsoft Exchange for email, store documents in Windows file shares, store user accounts in Active Directory, and use Microsoft Office on the desktop. Most schools are all Microsoft currently, but the company’s Microsoft’s complete failure to recognise the importance of mobile technology early enough has broken the mind share which allowed them to reach this monopoly. A generation of teachers and students are now entering their educational careers without Microsoft.

A generation of teachers and students are now entering their educational careers without Microsoft.

In around 2005 I attempted to encourage a number of teachers to begin experimenting with Open Office. If you haven’t used it, Open Office is an suite of open source office applications that replicates Microsoft’s alternative. Even then we recognised the exorbitant financial toll Microsoft Office was having on our IT budget and we wanted to, if not replace Microsoft’s suite of applications, at least lessen its control on the curriculum.

The project failed completely. Not because the feature sets of the suites were not comparable, but simply because outside of the IT department very few had the time or desire to become familiar with the new system. For teachers the financial saving that Open Office represented simply didn’t present enough of a reason to switch.

While we’re talking about budgets, you’ve likely noticed the drastically reduced cost of volume licensing Microsoft software in recent years. Where once we were annually paying in excess of £15,000 for Windows and Office, now we pay a little over £5000. If this isn’t an acknowledgement of increased competition, I don’t know what is.

Microsoft’s Lack of Vision

Microsoft, for all it’s power in the market, hasn’t been known for its vision. They completely missed the importance of the Internet, and then spent a few years scrabbling around trying to implement their own proprietary alternative.  Then along came the iPad. It didn’t matter that they had had almost three years of the iPhone to get their stuff together, Microsoft was left completely unprepared. The company were caught with their drawbridge down and Apple proudly strolled across.

But it’s not just the shift to mobile technology that is the most important aspect of the mobile technology revolution. The iPad cleared the way for others to follow. The Open Office experiment proved that we needed more than just an equivalent to Windows or Office, we needed something of the magnitude of the iPad to stomp a path right through Redmond. Had the iPad not existed the Chromebook would have sunk into oblivion and Android would have been a consumer only product.

Apple’s greatest legacy isn’t the touch screen or the app store, it’s that our users are no longer fearful if their computer doesn’t have a Start button.

With the iPad Apple succeeded in opening the eyes of consumers– and by extension those of our teachers and students — to alternatives to Microsoft software. The iPad provided the sexy hardware, the flash but simple operating system, and a new way to deliver software in a way that was compelling enough to change the habits of IT users.

Apple’s greatest legacy isn’t the touch screen or the app store, it’s that our users are no longer fearful if their computer doesn’t have a Start button.

Does Microsoft Have a Place in The School of The Future?

So, where are we now? The presentation I sat through this morning was brilliant…for me as an experienced network administrator. The software shown provided exactly the level of control I want, and enough knobs and buttons to push to keep me in network heaven for the foreseeable future. Windows Server 2012, and System Center 2012 are brilliant products, but they’re also extremely complex and its for this reason that only the largest of schools will ever implement them.

While Google and Apple are moving to simplify device management, Microsoft is strongly moving in the opposite direction. Microsoft has been explicit that they consider PowerShell — Windows 2012’s all encompassing command-line interface — to be the standard method of control for network administrators. The GUI still exists, but Microsoft doesn’t expect “true administrators” to use it.

Likewise, imaging Windows is “no longer supported.” Going forward Microsoft will only support systems which have been consumer installed, or set up using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). If they wanted to alienate a huge section of the education market, this is how to do it.

Features like the ability to create an iSCSI SAN managed by Windows, add an iPad to a domain, control network access with NPS, Work Folders, Remote Apps web feed, session based RDP are all great, but Microsoft seems to be headed off down a road alone while the competition can only look back with confusion. In the business world with huge corporate networks Microsoft makes complete sense, but for schools with limited budgets and personnel the implementation has to be questioned.

Schools want low cost, low maintenance, flexible devices. They want devices that are instant-on, don’t slow down, and are quick to log in to. They want iPads, Chromebooks, and smartphones, not a complex server infrastructure. The Microsoft representative, when asked about the amount of time required to manage System Center 2012 said, “it’s a full time job.” Unless you are an administrator responsible for multiple sites and thousands of desktops this makes no sense.

Microsoft Has Lost its Power

When Microsoft released a Remote Desktop app for iOS and Android a few weeks ago many saw it as sign that the company was finally opening up to new mobile platforms. Microsoft makes the argument that they are transitioning into a services company, rather than a software company. But I would argue that they had to release these apps because the market has reached a tipping point.

Previously Microsoft could use their weight in the market to bolster or weaken a product. When Microsoft had incentive to support Mac they did so by releasing Internet Explorer for Apple’s platform. When they no longer wanted to support Mac they pulled the software.

Microsoft releasing RDP apps for competing mobile operating systems is acknowledgement that failure to do so would make their server infrastructure and software ecosystem irrelevant to many users. The power has shifted. Where previously users would look for a platform on which to run Microsoft Office, now they will instead look for an alternative to Office.

Where once Microsoft Office was a standard application, we’re now seeing it relegated to specialist software. In the same way that Adobe Photoshop is only installed where it’s required, Microsoft Office will only be installed for specific use cases.

Services Not Software

I will admit I was slightly skeptical when we installed our first set of Chromebooks last September, but the opinion of teachers and students alike has been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, if I spent the time I could get a similar setup with Windows 8 laptops. I could pour hours into Microsoft deployments and System Center 2012, but why should I when I can get the desired result with an externally managed service? I just connect my devices and go.

The truth is that Microsoft should be scared of Chromebooks. Google is getting in at the grassroots. They’re creating a generation of students who may never use a single piece of Microsoft software.

Unless you are running a large network across multiple sites with thousands of desktops I see little reason to recommend a Microsoft infrastructure. In fact, many schools are now ripping out their ICT suites and replacing them with mobile devices for use across the curriculum, and they’re not doing it with Windows.

There have been many articles this week about why Microsoft is so scared of Chromebooks that they feel forced to produce what are essentially political smear adverts to slight Google’s laptop. The truth is that Microsoft should be scared of Chromebooks. Google is getting in at the grassroots. They’re creating a generation of students who may never use a single piece of Microsoft software.

Microsoft is shifting to become a services company. Office 365, is a great example of this. The problem Microsoft has is that they have lost their anchor in the market through which to funnel users to their online services. There are now competing products like Google Apps which provide similar services and many schools are making the switch. How much of the internal infrastructure of a school can Microsoft hold onto in this shift is yet to be seen.

So, I’m left with the thought, if we had to start from scratch, if we threw everything away and began again, how much of our school infrastructure would we build with Microsoft software? The answer, I think, is very little. How about you?

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So…welcome back to the future…the year 2020. What do you think about how far Microsoft has come in education over the last five years? In my opinion they’ve not only met the challenge but now become the front runner for enterprise and educational technology.

What do you think? Let me know below.