4 ms·

Considering equipment leases have been around forever I feel like this is just a way to say "why yes, we do subscriptions as well!". The real takeaway here is i

Considering equipment leases have been around forever I feel like this is just a way to say "why yes, we do subscriptions as well!". The real takeaway here is it's not that subscribers (customers) want this. It's that Wall Street wants this because: investors. This is because deferred futures are great for smoothing and forecasting of revenue. Subscriptions are ultimately bad for the buyer because you pay more and get less in most situations. And then you have vendors offering subscriptions that literally have taken formerly perpetually sold product and wrapped it up in a subscription model with little to no value add. It's also given vendors a way to lock customers out of support and upgrades. I'm waiting for the pushback... People complain about it, but not as vocally as they should.

Spooky23 7y ago
Microsoft’s upgrade cycles for Windows 10 are a big problem for many companies. Many places deferred PC upgrade cycles for 6-10 years because they didn’t need them. Now they are stuck with an accelerated upgrade cycle and big capex. With respect to other subscriptions, I think that you’ll see pushback. Adobe and Microsoft play hardball, which gets old quick.
- jklehm 7y ago
  I don't follow, Win10 runs on a 9 year old pc for me without issue?
  - hermitdev 7y ago
    I think it's more of a will this update cripple our 20yr old in house developed app that is crucial for the business that either we don't know how to maintain or lost the source no longer working on the latest windows. Previous employer, we were on WinXP and compiling a/ VS2003. Upgrade to Win7 mostly effectively crippled VS2003 for reasons I don't know. This necessitated porting our very large (100s of Millions of LOC in C++ to at least VS2008) set of in-house libraries. It should on paper be trivial, but it was a firm wide effort that spanned 18 months. Why? Because someone sent the CEO an xlsx that he couldn't open. This was circa 2007-2008. We were forced to upgrade OS and compiler for the new Office version, but it trickled into a firm wide rebuild of all C++ code. Wasnt pretty or fun.
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      LTSB edition is supposed to fix that. Unfortunately their licensing for LTSB is strange and not friendly...
      - Spooky23 7y ago
        If LTS[B/C] is the answer, you’re usually asking the wrong question.
      - wongarsu 7y ago
        That would likely turn the 18 month upgrade effort into a 36 month upgrade effort that happens 5 years later. Sometimes long upgrade cycles are great, but I suspect a yearly upgrade to the latest Visual Studio would have been a lot less painful. Fixing a few small issues is much easier than fixing many of them, and having to do it yearly both makes everyone better at doing it and better at avoiding the creation of such issues.
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      Manically laughing at the wonderful logic of the universe. Much laryngeal nerve.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    It’s not supported and isn’t reliable enough to be cost effective. Microsoft barely supports what they claim to support, its bad advice to do this unless you have no options at all. Being accountable for upgrading about 250k devices, we found that 3-5% of devices with questionable support status failed, as compared to near zero for supported devices. That 3-5% is unpredictable and expensive to address. You also have to remember that Windows 10 isn’t a thing, it’s a lifestyle. Windows 10 1803 went EOL last week, and there are devices that worked with 1803 that won’t work with new builds.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  Upgrading Windows 10 regularly is an operational burden not a capital burden.
  - alexanderdmitri 7y ago
    It's definitely a security issue in the sense they've explicitly reserved the right to change and redefine the data they collect from Windows 10 machines with each update while reserving the right to not state what data they're syphoning at any one point.
- no_wizard 7y ago
  I’ve never understood why modern businesses have these deployment issues. Maybe it’s the nature of where I work but we are always on the latest windows 10 version and we keep it that way quite aggressively without issues
  - el_dev_hell 7y ago
    I worked for a fortune 500 manufacturing company not long ago (2-3 years). Their main ERP was running on an AS400 mainframe and multiple pseudo-linked applications that were recently (4 years ago) updated to run on Windows 7 (which took 7 years to complete). > I’ve never understood why modern businesses have these deployment issues. Not every business is a tech-first company. Plenty of huge companies have legacy systems in place that can't be pushed to Windows 10 with a simple update.
taurath 7y ago
Isn’t Dell private again though?
- travem 7y ago
  Dell is publicly traded again, as of just under a year ago. See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dell-ipo/dell-returns-to-market-with-nyse-listing-idUSKCN1OR14E https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dell-ipo/dell-returns-to-...
tyingq 7y ago
It is a little different than a lease in that there's spare capacity on your floor that you don't pay for until you use it. IBM has done this with mainframes forever, so it's not new either. But, there is some convenience in rolling in a full rack and paying as you consume.
zby 7y ago
"Subscriptions are ultimately bad for the buyer because you pay more and get less in most situations." - in efficient markets anything that is good for the supplier will eventually be also good for the customer. Companies compete for customers and if subscription makes one company more stable or cheaper to finance or whatever then there will be soon a competitor using this subscription advantage to offer a better/cheaper product.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  Nobody said anything about efficient markets. Let me simplify this. If you were to lease a car the only way it ends up better for you as the lessee is if you can negotiate a residual value that's lower than the price you can sell the car at at time of lease expiration. In many cases, with cars, you can do that. Computers, not so much. And with software under the subscription model you have nothing to recoup at the end. If you have some example of this working in the consumers favor feel free to share. But I've worked for vendors. The subscription model has never been an advantage or positive for the buyer. Not once.

Spooky23 7y ago

Microsoft’s upgrade cycles for Windows 10 are a big problem for many companies. Many places deferred PC upgrade cycles for 6-10 years because they didn’t need them. Now they are stuck with an accelerated upgrade cycle and big capex. With respect to other subscriptions, I think that you’ll see pushback. Adobe and Microsoft play hardball, which gets old quick.

jklehm 7y ago
I don't follow, Win10 runs on a 9 year old pc for me without issue?
- hermitdev 7y ago
  I think it's more of a will this update cripple our 20yr old in house developed app that is crucial for the business that either we don't know how to maintain or lost the source no longer working on the latest windows. Previous employer, we were on WinXP and compiling a/ VS2003. Upgrade to Win7 mostly effectively crippled VS2003 for reasons I don't know. This necessitated porting our very large (100s of Millions of LOC in C++ to at least VS2008) set of in-house libraries. It should on paper be trivial, but it was a firm wide effort that spanned 18 months. Why? Because someone sent the CEO an xlsx that he couldn't open. This was circa 2007-2008. We were forced to upgrade OS and compiler for the new Office version, but it trickled into a firm wide rebuild of all C++ code. Wasnt pretty or fun.
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    LTSB edition is supposed to fix that. Unfortunately their licensing for LTSB is strange and not friendly...
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      If LTS[B/C] is the answer, you’re usually asking the wrong question.
    - wongarsu 7y ago
      That would likely turn the 18 month upgrade effort into a 36 month upgrade effort that happens 5 years later. Sometimes long upgrade cycles are great, but I suspect a yearly upgrade to the latest Visual Studio would have been a lot less painful. Fixing a few small issues is much easier than fixing many of them, and having to do it yearly both makes everyone better at doing it and better at avoiding the creation of such issues.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Manically laughing at the wonderful logic of the universe. Much laryngeal nerve.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  It’s not supported and isn’t reliable enough to be cost effective. Microsoft barely supports what they claim to support, its bad advice to do this unless you have no options at all. Being accountable for upgrading about 250k devices, we found that 3-5% of devices with questionable support status failed, as compared to near zero for supported devices. That 3-5% is unpredictable and expensive to address. You also have to remember that Windows 10 isn’t a thing, it’s a lifestyle. Windows 10 1803 went EOL last week, and there are devices that worked with 1803 that won’t work with new builds.
zamadatix 7y ago
Upgrading Windows 10 regularly is an operational burden not a capital burden.
- alexanderdmitri 7y ago
  It's definitely a security issue in the sense they've explicitly reserved the right to change and redefine the data they collect from Windows 10 machines with each update while reserving the right to not state what data they're syphoning at any one point.
no_wizard 7y ago
I’ve never understood why modern businesses have these deployment issues. Maybe it’s the nature of where I work but we are always on the latest windows 10 version and we keep it that way quite aggressively without issues
- el_dev_hell 7y ago
  I worked for a fortune 500 manufacturing company not long ago (2-3 years). Their main ERP was running on an AS400 mainframe and multiple pseudo-linked applications that were recently (4 years ago) updated to run on Windows 7 (which took 7 years to complete). > I’ve never understood why modern businesses have these deployment issues. Not every business is a tech-first company. Plenty of huge companies have legacy systems in place that can't be pushed to Windows 10 with a simple update.

taurath 7y ago

Isn’t Dell private again though?

travem 7y ago
Dell is publicly traded again, as of just under a year ago. See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dell-ipo/dell-returns-to-market-with-nyse-listing-idUSKCN1OR14E https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dell-ipo/dell-returns-to-...

tyingq 7y ago

It is a little different than a lease in that there's spare capacity on your floor that you don't pay for until you use it. IBM has done this with mainframes forever, so it's not new either. But, there is some convenience in rolling in a full rack and paying as you consume.

zby 7y ago

"Subscriptions are ultimately bad for the buyer because you pay more and get less in most situations." - in efficient markets anything that is good for the supplier will eventually be also good for the customer. Companies compete for customers and if subscription makes one company more stable or cheaper to finance or whatever then there will be soon a competitor using this subscription advantage to offer a better/cheaper product.

windexh8er 7y ago
Nobody said anything about efficient markets. Let me simplify this. If you were to lease a car the only way it ends up better for you as the lessee is if you can negotiate a residual value that's lower than the price you can sell the car at at time of lease expiration. In many cases, with cars, you can do that. Computers, not so much. And with software under the subscription model you have nothing to recoup at the end. If you have some example of this working in the consumers favor feel free to share. But I've worked for vendors. The subscription model has never been an advantage or positive for the buyer. Not once.