It's probably a legit complaint, but still potentially the fault of Microsoft. People learn how to use Excel, and the free alternative suites don't have all the same functionality (or if they do, it's not the same UI so you have to re-learn it).

And with as prolific as Office is, you're going to have to open office documents. If that doesn't work cleanly, that's a big issue.

I haven't looked into if whatever incompatibilities are a result of Microsoft pressure or technical shenanigans, or it just being a natural consequence of the free suites being less well funded in their development efforts.

I don't think it's impossible to run an enterprise with FOSS - but it is not easy.

> Funnily enough, during the conversation, he kept making new financial offers, including what Microsoft would add to the price, for the school department, for example. They continually became cheaper by a million, another million, another million, and later a dozen million. That's how important the symbol of the renegade state capital of Munich, internationally perceived as an IT stronghold, was to Microsoft.

This was Ballmer though, not gates. Maybe Gates had a separate visit.

How are you even going to ingest the data you want to visualize from the database it's in otherwise? It won't fit on your computer as is. You need something like Tableau to query and inspect it.

edit: Sure, let the finance people have their spreadsheets, but don't let that stuff anywhere near engineering and data science. It's a major anti-pattern.