The author shows notorious negative cases to invalidate a whole industry. Talks about the beauty of Excel more with a nostalgic look. If a company can replace a SaaS subscription with a process in which some employees share an Excel file, they don't need other software at all. Any software product (SaaS included) what tries to sell is a methodology or a way to do the things, condensing the know-how of an industry; whereas an Excel file most of the time means a clumsy attempt by someone to bring some order to the process. The data dependency is something governments should regulate, forcing easy portability. Of course, after years of using a specific tool it is natural to create a dependency, but it could be considered a tax from modern life as the author himself explains, it's something you cannot escape from. Or at least, the change will not involve just cancelling all your company SaaS subscriptions