5 ms·
No. This is the latest in a series of good moves that Microsoft has been making lately in order to regain some integrity. Microsoft's toxic and manipulative pa
by fergie 7y ago
No. This is the latest in a series of good moves that Microsoft has been making lately in order to regain some integrity.
Microsoft's toxic and manipulative partner program has been used to extract excessive license fees from customers for years. Engineers and consultancies have been encouraged to "level-up" in the system, while customers and casual users are shut out. A whole proprietary ecosystem has been allowed to develop which requires a large financial buy-in just to provide simple services like databases and email.
Its clear that this has to change, and Microsoft is right to reduce partner dependency and vendor lock-in, painful as it may be for those who have heavily invested in these ecosystems.
- reallydontask 7y ago> Microsoft's toxic and manipulative partner program has been used to extract excessive license fees from customers for years. In what way is the partner programme toxic and manipulative? (asking genuinely)
- drcongo 7y agoIt has been used to extract excessive license fees from customers for years.
- TheSmiddy 7y agoTo maintain partner status you need to sell a minimum quantity of products, with a tiered system that grants better discounts and more benefits for hitting higher tiers. This has the flow on effect of managed service providers recommending Microsoft branded solutions instead of far more suitable competitors for the customers use case. For example selling a customer a Windows server licence with SQL 2017 installed to run as a backend for a simple website that 10 people a day are going to visit when a centos box with postgres would be far more cost effective (and reliable) for the customer. Now this isn't unique to Microsoft, literally all the big vendors do this (eg Cisco, VMware, every single antivirus company, etc) so not sure what makes Microsofts one particularly toxic, other than the fact that the free stuff they provide is genuinely valuable to the partners which is not always true for the other vendors.
- matwood 7y ago> For example selling a customer a Windows server licence with SQL 2017 installed to run as a backend for a simple website that 10 people a day are going to visit when a centos box with postgres would be far more cost effective (and reliable) for the customer. I get the point you're trying to make, but this isn't really a good example. If a customer is already a Windows user, introducing linux and Postgres may not be the best solution. A basic windows license, sql server express, and iis should work fine though.
- zerkten 7y ago> A basic windows license, sql server express, and iis should work fine though. The point is that the partner was incentivized to not do something simple like this. I think many would, but many did not especially in the mid- and enterprise spaces where this stuff eventually caught up.
- JamesBarney 7y agoYeah a centos and postgres admin is going to be more expensive then someone who can administer Windows/Sql Server Express/IIS.
- drtillberg 7y agoI wonder if increased antitrust enforcement activity has anything to do with this.
- endorphone 7y agoThis is a rather incredible take, and you seem to be seriously arguing that Microsoft thinks customers are just giving them too much money and they just feel so guilty about it. Microsoft once saw MPNs as necessary to get the sale. Now they don't, and they'd rather just cut MPNs out and make the sales themselves (more for them), and begrudgingly let it continue to exist in a minimal fashion.
- lukeschlather 7y agoI haven't done a ton of procurement in Microsoft-land but I have often heard the MPN described as a convoluted mechanism for offering software discounts through third-parties. As a Microsoft customer, I would rather they just have bulk licensing discount and easy-to-understand licensing one-click licensing rather than having to call (with a telephone!) up some third-party "distributor" to get a discount.
- fergie 7y agoArguing that the reseller model creates a bad vibe that is not good for business, and that direct sales are more profitable and more transparent.