That generalizes to every kind of lock-in: have a viable escape plan, but only execute it if you need or it becomes cheap enough that it won't harm you.

Just having the plan is already expensive enough.

My experience is the opposite: AWS has more features on paper but most of them exist only to tick a checkbox. Azure has more integrations between their offerings, as well as Azure Active Directory, and Microsoft 365.

And Active Directory integrates horribly with everything outside Microsoft.

Azure Active Directory has both SAML and OpenID Connect endpoints… what’s missing?

We use it across many non-MS services without issues. Care to expand?

We’ve had reliability and availability problems esp with azure and also Google. less with AWS.

None are ideal.

Why do I want AD or Microsoft 365?

You personally? No idea. You probably don't. But many (most?) businesses use AD and Office and aren't particularly interested in migrating to alternative solutions.

Yes, Microsoft focuses on the customer (corporate IT), not the user.

This is how the iphone was able to nuke windows phones which were designed to meet the needs of IT

I mainly work in startups. None of them in recent memory have bothered with AD or Office. Okta and Google Workspaces take their place.

Those MS problems have an “IBM mainframe” problem. New businesses won’t choose it.

That’s why I say “why do I want them?” If I was starting a new business I’d have no reason to use them.

O365 = teams, docs, outlook, etc. workspace tools

AD = identity, access, privileging, SSO

I know what they are. No company I’ve worked for recently used them.

In my mind they’re legacy business products.

Sure, most businesses use them, but I don’t necessarily believe that is a forever thing. At one point most businesses had mainframes.

Refuse reality at your own peril. These tools are actively used at scale across most enterprises, and likely will be for the majority of your career.

How many Fortune 500 companies were founded in the SaaS era?

I'm going to guess that the 5% that don't use Azure/Office 365 represent newer entrants to the Fortune 500.

71% of Fortune 500 companies use mainframes [3], and yet they are considered a dead technology with essentially no future. Do you know anyone or anyone who knows anyone who learned how to develop on mainframes in college in the current millennium? It sure wasn't part of my CS curriculum!

Small businesses represent almost half of US economic activity [1] and represent 99.7% of firms with paid employees [2]

[1] https://advocacy.sba.gov/2019/01/30/small-businesses-generat...

[2] https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/0609...

[3] https://www.precisely.com/blog/mainframe/9-mainframe-statist...

Just to steel man your statement: You should strive for excellence in deployment with all providers (dabble) but have your initial core setup on one cloud (YAGNI principle) until when multicloud capacity is needed (at scale)