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https://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn-uk/news/3078458/the-worst-move-from-microsoft-in-30-years-mpn-changes-spark-uproar If you are a Microsoft Partner be
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – a slap in the face to Partners]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
The face slaps have been ongoing for years. First, physical media was eliminated some years back, while increasing the price by almost double at the same time. Now, this new “Action Pack” which removes more benefits that were originally designed to help others sell and support Microsoft. Microsoft used to treat partners as partners. Now, they treat them as a profit center.
GreatAndPowerfulTech
Well I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising coming from a company that clearly doesn’t even value its own customers!
There’s a real danger here. Unfortunately, even with the proliferation of Apple and Android products offering alternatives to the consumer desktop/laptop market share, Microsoft is in a monopoly position with a majority of the computing world locked into the Windows/Office platform. There are simply no realistically viable alternatives. And even if there were, switching over would be a mammoth undertaking for even the smallest of businesses.
When the wheels come flying off this wagon, there’s going to be one heck of a kablooey the world over.
I wonder if there is any real world way in our free market system to preemptively stem the disaster before it happens?
There are simply no realistically viable alternatives
Even Microsoft knows that Linux is a viable alternative :
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/linux-usage-on-microsoft-azure-has-now-surpassed-windows/
Well I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising coming from a company that clearly doesn’t even value its own customers!
There’s a real danger here. Unfortunately, even with the proliferation of Apple and Android products offering alternatives to the consumer desktop/laptop market share, Microsoft is in a monopoly position with a majority of the computing world locked into the Windows/Office platform. There are simply no realistically viable alternatives. And even if there were, switching over would be a mammoth undertaking for even the smallest of businesses.
When the wheels come flying off this wagon, there’s going to be one heck of a kablooey the world over.
I wonder if there is any real world way in our free market system to preemptively stem the disaster before it happens?
“no viable alternatives” blatantly untrue as a blanket statement.
If the industry you are in has a mission critical app that will only run on Windows, then this statement is true.
Even in small/home business support my need for a winblows machine is minimal, and shrinking every year. Most of our customers don’t buy Office they use OpenOffice or LibreOffice. My hard drive data recovery and imaging happens from MacOS. I use Microsoft Remote Desktop from my Mac. Most of my business customers with Winblows servers only use them for file serving which might transition to a NAS of some kind running a port of open source (Linux) code.
Since casual users primarily do email, web browsing, and light file creation/editing of documents and images there are plenty of low cost or free Linux or macOS options. The days of Linux being a nerd-only-hard-to-maintain-os are long gone.
The reason M$ has a “monopoly” is that managers and bean counters are ignorant of alternatives and unwilling to change. It’s a matter of time until the current minions and henchmen filling the cubicles all over the world rise through the org charts and then you will see M$ market share dropping in free fall. Very small segments of the computing industry may stay forever. Exchange email server clusters in big enterprise environments. But even if the three big employers near me stay M$ forever that’s about 50,000 seats. In a world where every one of those seats represents at least one or two home computers, and the total population of the area is about 250,000. That’s a lot of market share to lose and M$ is doing a fine job of alienating users, support businesses, and now partners.
Keep driving customers away and jacking up prices and see how well that works out in the long run…
Hey look! Another Feature Update!
You mean I shouldn't click Check for Updates?
Where is the Any key?
As for: “no viable alternatives” blatantly untrue as a blanket statement.
That’s only true for users that simply use web browsers and a cross platform email client. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case for businesses or advanced stand alone users.
We’ve been looking for a direct MS Office alternative since Office 2007 appeared. No product we’ve tested preserves formatting 100% of the time, but that’s something we could work around with simple changes. Nearly impossible is preserving the many macro and programming components found in our multitude of documents, spreadsheets, and Access projects. We’ve found few customers who can time and cost justify the work required to make this transition, train, and account for lost productivity while transitioning.
Additionally, the application(s) specific to each individual business would need to be substituted, migrated, updated, or recoded to run on another platform. The amount of time required, both in implementation and then again in retraining is substantial, as is usually the cost. Again, this is something few businesses can justify.
And lastly, there is the simple issue of software availability. Many types of software just don’t exist on platforms other than Windows for quite a few applications and product categories.
If starting from scratch, one may have the luxury of implementing a purely Linux or Apple based solution, but for those invested in the Windows infrastructure, change is a very expensive and possibly impossible proposition.
For a good idea about the hurdles, take a look at Munich’s switch to Linux and their return to Windows. Politics aside, it really boiled down to the real costs of switching and the lack of viable software.
GaryK,
While I do understand and appreciate your point about geeks driving most corporate tech buying decisions…
never underestimate the willingness of a change-averse “important executive” who “knows about software and stuff” and “uses computers a lot” to “make a hard business decision” to override the well-informed and well-considered recommendations of the techies.
After reading many of the comments, I had to add my two cents.
I fall into the small business category and am a MS partner. I use the internal licensing to test our applications on a variety of platforms. Our clients are finacial institutions, health care, etc. and they all use Windows and MS Office. This change would hurt us directly.
The arguement of “no viable alternatives” being false only applies if you have complete control of your environment. When you depend on clients, they dictate what environment you have.
So for us small businesses that sell and consult, let’s hope MS will backtrack on this.
After reading many of the comments, I had to add my two cents.
I fall into the small business category and am a MS partner. I use the internal licensing to test our applications on a variety of platforms. Our clients are finacial institutions, health care, etc. and they all use Windows and MS Office. This change would hurt us directly.
The arguement of “no viable alternatives” being false only applies if you have complete control of your environment. When you depend on clients, they dictate what environment you have.
So for us small businesses that sell and consult, let’s hope MS will backtrack on this.
“When you depend on clients, they dictate what environment you have.” Let me add, the client’s clients also have a hand in dictating that environment.
How very true. Those who blissfully suggest it easy to wander off into the lands of Linux, Libre/Open Office, Apple (running what software?) ignore the fact almost no company has a clean sheet of paper from which to start. Any of these alternatives would likely be fine IF starting from scratch and IF one could find the expertise and IF the company operated in a vacuum.
I have a client who wanted to avoid Office in the worst way and actually has LibreOffice installed on some of its computers. However, the client had to purchase some Office 365 seats in order to handle the files send by its clients.
Microsoft had best not rely on me as a source of income for much longer. I am retired. While employed, I used Word frequently and at length every day, now perhaps a letter once a week or less. I used Excel for a gradebook, financial records, banking, etc., but now again once a week or less. Outlook I still use daily for the email and calendar functions, but even that is becoming less important. Nearly all of what I want to do I can do on my Samsung tablet. I doubt that I will ever purchase another desktop computer (even I am a bit surprised by how soon that has become the case) and my laptop is just a larger screen version of what I can do on the Tablet. Which of these three “computers” do I use many times a day? Do I even need to ask.
The bottom line…. Microsoft will have one fewer customer in another year or so. And I am guessing that my experience is the same as many, many other “non-business” users. In a way it does not matter whether or not Microsoft treats me with contempt, or that Microsoft thinks that it knows best what I should do with my computer(s) and how I should do it. Microsoft is becoming irrelevant in my world.
= Ax Kramer
Microsoft is in the process of moving everything online under their control.
Rent from Microsoft. Let Microsoft manage your computing.
Eventually, there will be no Partners.
Bingo. I raised this same alarm to some partners who were enthusiastically trying to sell me on Office 365 back when it was just starting to get the hard push from Microsoft. I told them they were selling their own funerals because, with this business model, who needs the partners?
Further reading:
http://www.sbsfaq.com/?p=4489&doing_wp_cron=1562245148.2080910205841064453125
https://assetsprod.microsoft.com/en-hk/MPN-MAPS-Product-Usage-Guide.pdf
GaryK,
While I do understand and appreciate your point about geeks driving most corporate tech buying decisions…
never underestimate the willingness of a change-averse “important executive” who “knows about software and stuff” and “uses computers a lot” to “make a hard business decision” to override the well-informed and well-considered recommendations of the techies.
Yes, you’re right. We’ve all faced those, and they’ve all made decisions we then live with. My larger point is that the foundation of MS’s business has been us recommending MS software. MS is eroding its own foundation. They probably think, if they’ve bothered to articulate it to themselves, that techs are no longer important to their business model because the execs you’re describing are making the decisions. I believe they’re wrong, and that MS in 10 years will no longer be the dominant force it is today. Regardless of their policies, that may be inevitable anyway. We’ll have to wait and see. Why don’t we meet back right here 10 years from today and have a glass of apple cider and see where things are at?
GaryK
Microsoft is in the process of moving everything online under their control.
Rent from Microsoft. Let Microsoft manage your computing.
Eventually, there will be no Partners.Bingo. I raised this same alarm to some partners who were enthusiastically trying to sell me on Office 365 back when it was just starting to get the hard push from Microsoft. I told them they were selling their own funerals because, with this business model, who needs the partners?
My experience is that my clients still depend on me even after the transition to Office 365 applications and hosted Exchange email just as much as when they had an in house Exchange Server and perpetual licensed Office. I might lose a bit of income in that I don’t get to sell and install a new version of Office every 5 years or so. It’s not really that big a deal as I am upgrading their hardware and reinstalling their subscription products every 5 years or so anyway.
I am unhappy about the loss of IUR but with Action Pack renewals at $500 a year these days I can see where I will just subscribe to a few Office 365 seats and buy Server 2019 Essentials. I might actually save money as I am not likely to continue with Action Pack.
For people who have heavily invested their time, energy, and money into proprietary systems like Microsoft and Windows, it can come as a great disappointment that Microsoft has been morphing their software to act more and more like mal-ware. Proprietary software gives itself rights that shift the power balance from our hands (end users) to their hands, so that we are relying on their good will to provide something acceptable for us. People don’t like what Microsoft did to sneak W10 onto their computers in the first place, but then buy a new system, trusting that Microsoft will not continue to assert their control and power over the new system, despite the fact that the behaviors that are found obnoxious and abusive are being more blatantly installed.
At some point one has to stop volunteering to give one’s own power up. Does your computer work for you, or for Microsoft? People who use open source operating systems are choosing to look at the long term, retain their power over their hardware, and can assert their power to accept, reject, or change what is available to them. Where power is not balanced, opportunities for abuse arise. It would be important to see what rights Microsoft partners had identified in their contracts. Apparently, just like individual end users, their only choice is to pay up, or quit.
It might be far more valuable to invest in non-proprietary software in the long run, rather than looking forward to continued power imbalance and abuse… more than simple cost analysis might indicate.
Maybe I’m inspired by the celebration of the 4th of July, here in the US… but there are generations of those that have given their lives, for freedom… and there are too many people who are ready to sign away rights in order to do things faster, or over the internet, or because it is the latest new thing. Its harder for me to learn a new operating system… but really important, now that Microsoft has proven to be less than a benign tyrant, flexing its power over us, to look at what we do have choice about. Making the choice for myself, and my family, we are going to choose what does not restrict my choice, undermine my control, and use consumer/ad friendly terms for spyware. Free.
Microsoft partners are seeing why choosing a proprietary system may not benefit them in the long run. It can be an expensive lesson.
We can turn a blind eye, or see what the lesson is, and learn from it.
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
After reading many of the comments, I had to add my two cents.
I fall into the small business category and am a MS partner. I use the internal licensing to test our applications on a variety of platforms. Our clients are finacial institutions, health care, etc. and they all use Windows and MS Office. This change would hurt us directly.
The arguement of “no viable alternatives” being false only applies if you have complete control of your environment. When you depend on clients, they dictate what environment you have.
So for us small businesses that sell and consult, let’s hope MS will backtrack on this.
“When you depend on clients, they dictate what environment you have.” Let me add, the client’s clients also have a hand in dictating that environment.
How very true. Those who blissfully suggest it easy to wander off into the lands of Linux, Libre/Open Office, Apple (running what software?) ignore the fact almost no company has a clean sheet of paper from which to start. Any of these alternatives would likely be fine IF starting from scratch and IF one could find the expertise and IF the company operated in a vacuum.
I have a client who wanted to avoid Office in the worst way and actually has LibreOffice installed on some of its computers. However, the client had to purchase some Office 365 seats in order to handle the files send by its clients.
Quickbooks has macOs native version.
M$ themselves have macOS native Office.
Browsers are not OS specific any more, M$ lost that lawsuit.
M$ is seeing the light and is making it possible to install and run apps compiled for *nix os under Windows.
For DECADES everyone (big enterprise, small/medium business, home users) have distrusted M$ to publish a version of Windows that’s stable right out of the gate. Shoving “feature updates” down everyone’s throats every 6 months isn’t a solution. Fixing your relationship with customers is the solution.
Several of my customers still use XP based apps running in vm. Those vm DO NOT have to be hosted on systems running M$ os. It’s a matter of time until more and more business owners realize they can just virtualize an existing system and run it on a different os host system.
M$ publishes Remote Desktop for macOS.
There are probably more examples but I’m not interested in beating the drum that hard in a room full of M$ apologists.
If you don’t see the freight train coming down the tracks it’s not my problem.
Hey look! Another Feature Update!
You mean I shouldn't click Check for Updates?
Where is the Any key?
If you don’t see the freight train coming down the tracks it’s not my problem.
Your failure to understand the perspectives of others could be a problem not only for you, but also for your clients – and not everyone who uses/sells/supports Microsoft products is a “M$ apologist.”
Conversely, not everyone who knows & supports Linux believes it’s the best tool for every shop. Ubuntu, Mint, and Gentoo have all had distribution compromises and/or backdoors in the not-so-distant past; just because the OS has an “L” or a “U” in its name doesn’t mean that everything is perfect.
If you don’t see the freight train coming down the tracks it’s not my problem.
Your failure to understand the perspectives of others could be a problem not only for you, but also for your clients – and not everyone who uses/sells/supports Microsoft products is a “M$ apologist.”
Conversely, not everyone who knows & supports Linux believes it’s the best tool for every shop. Ubuntu, Mint, and Gentoo have all had distribution compromises and/or backdoors in the not-so-distant past; just because the OS has an “L” or a “U” in its name doesn’t mean that everything is perfect.
I do understand the perspectives of others. I just think they are stuck in the old paradigm of “must be descended from NT4” and refuse to open their eyes to the future. Continuing to do “what we’ve always done” with M$ is just prolonging the pain. Week after week there are more and bigger data breaches and when you dig down in them it’s a M$ vulnerability at the root. Linux isn’t the answer. macOS isn’t the answer. I’m pretty sure “let’s install the latest M$ os” isn’t the answer either. maybe a more discriminating attitude towards what is necessary vs what is convenient is the answer. for some, M$ os is necessary. but my assertion is that now, and growing into the future, more and more people and organizations will find that M$ is NOT necessary and in fact is both more expensive and less workable. at this point in time the alternatives to a M$ os are more viable than at any time in the past and the future continues that trend. ignore that and keep installing M$ products as a knee jerk reaction and you’re going to get run over by the freight train.
Hey look! Another Feature Update!
You mean I shouldn't click Check for Updates?
Where is the Any key?
U-turn:
Given your feedback, we have made the decision to roll back all planned changes related to internal use rights and competency timelines that were announced earlier this month. This means you will experience no material changes this coming fiscal year, and you will not be subject to reduced IUR licenses or increased costs related to those licenses next July as previously announced.
We listened to you, and we have acted.
Microsoft capitulates and agrees to undo planned partner product-licensing changes
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