Normally if management approves this kind of spending, they have to be convinced. You need to properly justify your proposal: what kind of competitive advantage

Normally if management approves this kind of spending, they have to be convinced. You need to properly justify your proposal: what kind of competitive advantage this would give us and so on. Companies don't spend money just to "have some influence". They want to have this influence for their advantage. And unfortunately Microsoft has a very long history of misusing this advantage.