The Sikh Geek

Microsoft lost its anti-trust appeal with the EU Commission as reported by BBC News Online yesterday. It might still appeal yet to the European Court of Justice as the Genereal Counsel wanted to absorb the details of the ruling before deciding. So, Microsoft was convicted of breaking anti-competition rules in the EU to complement the previous conviction back in the US. I watched Microsoft’s reaction through Brad Smith, Senior Vice President and thought it was a very measured and humble response. He even thanked the Court of First Instance for their committment and diligence in considering the issues.

On the other hand the Blue Monster made it in to the FT and Hugh has got a range of the Stormhoek wine branded with the Blue Monster label and being discussed in that article.

I thought this was a bit of a contrast with on the one hand the thing that many people point to as highlighting the not so good aspect and the attempt by Steve Clayton and Hugh MacLeod to tell a different story of Microsoft.

The EU case has been going on since 2004 and to be honest I think things have changed since then. The Novell/Microsoft agreement has brought about an Interoperability Lab and an official Strategy by Microsoft on Open Source. The work by the Port25 guys is pioneering within the context of Microsoft and they are quite open in saying that product groups still view them with some suspicion as they go about Microsoft trying to promote the idea that Open Source presents opportunties rather than just threats.

So, it’ll be interesting to see which side will win the day!

UPDATE

After writing this post I saw this post from Adriana Lukas linked from Hugh’s Blog and makes the same connections as me between the FT Article/Blue Monster and the Anti-trust result.

… I also just saw the comment from Barry Dorans (I’ve met the guy at a couple of NxtGenUG meetings) and I have to agree with him, I just wasn’t brave enough to say it

“Ah but you highlight the problem with bluemonster in your quote from the press release, it’s not about MS, or their employees, it’s all about Hugh. That certainly seems to be the reaction from a bunch of people, and that’s a shame, it’s diminished the effectiveness because it’s seen as another vehicle for the creator, not the subjects. It doesn’t have teeth any more, it’s been defanged because it’s not about the brand, but it’s about the creative.”

Certainly most of the reactions are congratulating Hugh in getting the article into the FT and can we have some wine by the way! I’ve felt for a little while it was becoming too much of an elite, of having coffee in trendy London cafes and connecting with people who were from exclusive Marketing companies because they think Hugh is hip and cool. I have nothing against Hugh, I love the stuff he does and use one of his cartoons as my business card now. It’s just that I don’t hear the types of conversations I thought I would and if you’re the only one doing it, then people then just begin to think you’re mad or on an ego trip or attention seeking.

Patrick Voss, Microsoft Licensing Marketing, has very kindly outlined how Partners can make the best use of the available resources to better understand and sell licensing and I appeciate him taking the time and trouble to do this.

Hi Vijay,

Sorry for the slight delay.  I’ve given an idea of some of the ways that Small Business Specialist partners (and others really) can learn about licensing or feedback to Microsoft if there are particular areas that they feel they need further help in.   If you have a moment to post this blog, that would be great.

“Having read the entries so far, I wanted to make sure that you are all aware of some of the ways that you can access licensing training and ways you can feed back to us if there are key topics you would like to see covered.

1. Use your Distributor (Disti):  Your Disti is there to provide you with advice on licensing as well as transacting.  They all have Licensing Specialists, so can answer scenario based questions for you.  Some also provide licensing training, so do ask them what support they can provide and remember, you do have a choice of which Disti you use.   For those that don’t know all of our Disti’s, we are currently updated our ‘Find an Authorised Distributor’ page on the licensing tab on the Partner Portal.  This will be complete by the end of September.

2. Use AskPartner

If you want further clarification following the response from your Disti, you can contact Microsoft via our AskPartner service.  Again, we have trained Licensing Specialists who are there to answer your licensing queries.

3. Take our Licensing training

We have just launched (last week) our new Licensing Learning Path which covers licensing fundamentals, Microsoft Licensing Sales Specialist and Sales Expert (MLSS and MLSE) up to Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) level.  .  This covers individual training on licensing from the basics of our programmes and product licensing, all the way to becoming an acknowledged expert as an MCP.  All the relevant training materials are linked from one site, which also outlines the broad level of licensing knowledge covered in each course.  Click on ‘Learning Paths’ under the Training and Events tab of the UK Partner Portal.

4. Feedback to us via your SBSC community.

If there are topics that a group of you feel we need to cover, feed this back via your local SBSC community and we will try our best to support you to understand that topic as a group.

I appreciate from all of your previous comments that Microsoft Licensing can seem rather daunting.  I have highlighted some of the options you have above to get access to training and ask questions.

Please do keep providing feedback as various members of the Microsoft team do see these blogs and make sure that they reach the relevant teams.”

Thanks Vijay and I’m glad that licensing is being discussed in the Small Bus Specialist community, so happy to feed in and support where I can.

All the best.

Patrick

Unfortunately Patrick’s comments got accidentally deleted after ending up in the Spam Filter on the blog. Patrick works at Microsoft UK on Licensing Marketing and he outlined the various resources for Partners to get trained up on Licensing. I appreciate him doing that and he emailed me to say that information about resources will be highlighted at the upcoming October Roadshows. Again, I apologise to Patrick as Spam is a huge problem on my little blog as I’ll easily get hundreds of spam messages a day and Akismet so far has stopped over 27,000 messages. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to review all the messages in the Spam queue but I’ll try my best as I don’t want to force people to register and login.

At the UK ISV Kickoff event today at Microsoft, that question got asked again, “Who understands Microsoft Licensing?”, this time by Steve Morrow, UK ISV Manager. This time NO hands went up in a packed Chicago 1 room full of ISV Partners (I think they were just too shy to admit it!). Well, at least SBSC Partners are slightly better than ISV Partners

Apparently ISV Partners previously told Steve to improve a number of areas and one of them was the “Complexity of Microsoft Licensing Programme”. Apparently, the Licensing Programme has been reduced from 108 to 26 and we’re probably at the base level now.

The expert company brought in to advise ISV Partners were Trustmarque who do nothing but Licensing. The nice chap from Trustmarque said that there was over 200 SKUs of Office!

I’m following Vlad’s advice and thinking happy thoughts and writing this post whilst sitting in the lotus position and meditating.

Here are some great tips from Steve Reynolds the CEO of TMS Mobility, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner who recently got some great results from a Microsoft cofunded Telemarketing Campaign for ISVs from the The Telemarketing Company. I think his tips apply fairly generally though.

• Get the competencies
• Be factual about your technology and capabilities
• Know and communicate precisely your USPs
• Have case studies and references to support your capabilities
• Partnerships are two way - build value for Microsoft
• Focus and plan
• Make the most of Microsoft programmes and campaigns
• Align with Microsoft Roadmap
• Partner for Success - fill the customer requirement gaps
• Understand the incremental value of partnerships

If you’re a SBSC Partner then you’ll probably be getting a Partner Satisfaction Survey soon from Microsoft. When you get it, you need to make sure you fill it out. Apparently not enough SBSC Partners fill it out (only a handful) and there has to be many many more doing it. Why? Because Partner Satisfaction is one of the measures used by Microsoft Corp to judge each Microsoft Subsidiuary like Microsoft UK. If there is a good sample of Partners and those Partners are generally quite happy, then more money will be allocated to the SBSC UK Programme and more money to spend on us. It’s a simple equation and it’s in our hands.

Port25 is announcing the opening of the Interoperability Lab at Cambridge, Mass. I think this’ll be a unique place to work.

I thought the comments below from Adam Vero were a great explanation of working with Licensing that they deserved a separate blog post.

Yes, licensing can be complex.
But then so can an enterprise-class document management system (for example).
You can use a simple file share to keep documents in, which is easy, but you do not have the richness or flexibility of a DMS and miss out on the benefits to the business of such a system. So it is with licensing. As Susanne points out, if you just want to keep it simple then you can buy full box products from a number of distributors (or the customer can easily buy them from an online retailer). If you want to get access to more benefits or to valuable cost savings, then one of the more complex solutions is probably more appropriate.
Taking your example of the 3 types of CAL. If MS only sold user CALs, some clients would lose out because they would have to buy more of the. Likewise Device CALs (especially given the explosion of mobile devices). Core CALs would be seen by many as a rip off since it includes the right to use products they don’t need or are not ready to deploy. The reason there are three versions is because each is appropriate to a particular scenario. You might just as well say that Cisco should only sell one model of switch or router; any more is just complicated muddying of the waters.

Fundamentally, one size simply does not fit all. The particular firewall configuration you create for one client will not be suitable for another with different needs. Does the manufacturer’s configuration manual tell you which options to choose? Probably not, it tells you how to change the setting, which options do what, but it is down to your experience to match the need to a solution and then implement it.

I am an MLSE, having just taken the last of the exams to move up from my MLSS thanks to Susanne prompting that these exams were about to be retired and replaced with a new scheme. (see http://tinyurl.com/353kjc)
I know I won’t use some of that knowledge for a long time, if ever (Academic Select? Not really my target market).However, taking these online tests does mean that I know what options exist, what questions to ask my clients and how to present to them the most promising choices for them to decide between. It is my job to understand my clients’ needs and to fit solutions to those - whether that be technical or licensing. This may mean I have to discuss business management topics such as why they might want to own a licence or ‘rent’ one through subscription. I don’t see this as much different from conversations about their risk stance to help me guide them to choices about security products. I need to understand their needs, aspirations and motivations to do the job properly.

In many ways licensing and software asset management of MS products has become easier due to the removal of all the various upgrades from older, different or competing products. This can mean that customers who are in difficulties are faced with a larger bill, but they also take some of the work and risk out of the situation.
I feel the current license plans do feel a bit like there are too many choices, but fundamentally there are three tracks (NB: this is slightly simplified):
1) low entry level, no planning, just pay as you go, some admin required to keep track of what you have - Open
2) entry level and price depending on size of business and commitment (needs forecast), less admin - Select
3) Decide to use MS products across the whole firm, must be big enough. Even less admin. - Enterprise.

Within those you have a choice of buying the product or renting it (subscription). In some cases you buy the product with an upfront payment, in others you spread the cost over the term of the agreement.
You can choose to take Software Assurance (or choose a plan where it is required, not optional). This has separate benefits associated with it (HUP, EPP etc).
So yes, when you combine those together that’s a lot of choices. The naming of the schemes does not help as much as it might (is Open Value better “value”, inherently?), but is getting better so it is more obvious how they line up against each other.

As for CALs, I have to say I think they make sense. Without them the core server offerings would be hugely more expensive. Smaller businesses would not be able to benefit from using the same class of software as their much bigger competitors. I know, some of the products still do have a ticket price on the server component which is a barrier to entry, but for Windows Server, Exchange and SQL for example, it’s not a very biased model.
If I buy CALs I only pay for what I use. I can easily budget for business growth - when I get another person I need a workstation, Office perhaps, and a couple of CALs. I can attribute those overheads directly to the department using them, and even charge them internally if that’s the way I manage IT as a cost centre. The only thing I need to worry about then is scaling the back-end to meet the technical requirements.
At the end of the day, some people do understand licensing. Some clients appreciate this knowledge and will choose those partners who have it. You might do well to become one of them or to partner with one. There are even ‘licensing gurus for hire’ who represent a low-risk to you as they often do not even sell the licenses, merely advise both client and supplier. Typically their work involves the broader topic of Software Asset Management as this is the real management consultancy opportunity lies.

Of course, many businesses do not have the first clue about licensing, so they do not value this knowledge in a supplier. They don’t want to expend the effort on the conversation nor answering the questions which get to the information to determine the right solution. These are the customers who buy everything OEM, or FPP. These ‘low hanging fruit’ are ripe for the picking.
Until they realise that they have been missing out on an opportunity to reduce their cost, their admin and their risk and you failed to point it out to them. At this point your credibility takes a knock, and is no different to a situation where you propose a short-sighted technical solution, or one which does not scale, or breaks down too often with inadequate support behind it.

The wrong product sold today may end up costing you the customer. You’d better hope they don’t find out about ‘proper’ license programmes from someone else.

Last night was the first meeting of AMITPRO after the summer break and it was a great session. Jen Brinton, SBSC Programme Manager of Microsoft UK came up and we had a pretty interactive session talking about the upcoming SBSC Programme and the SBSC PALs. For me personally, it is just great spending time with these guys and chatting and learning from them. It was great to see Andy’s blog post on last night and glad that he enjoyed it.

So, I’d like to give a mention and a thanks to those who came last night

James Harbidge, James Cash, Mark Poulding, Neil Guy (congratulations on the birth of your baby daughter), Paul Dadge, Richard Tubb, Steve Wright, William Spanfelner, Andy Parkes.

You know what this is a Community and it’s one that I’m proud to belong to and it’s alive well and getting stronger. Okay it’s not huge but that doesn’t matter to me because these guys are committed and passionate. As I’ve said before they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things which in turn makes them extraordinary individuals.

My conclusion to this question is that hardly anyone understands Microsoft Licensing. I’ve been to quite a few Microsoft Partner events and when the above question above is asked there is usually a very low number of businesses who say they understand it. This feedback is given time and time again but nothing really changes. The solution isn’t explaining it over and over again or writing Licensing Reseller Handbooks. If you can’t explain something to a customer in a very succint way, then it’s just a waste of time and if as an organisation you have to employ an army of people and distributors to support this, then something is fundamentally wrong. One aspect of Microsoft Licensing that just annoys me so much is the CAL (Client Access License) and something which Linux doesn’t have. A customer having made an investment in a server based solution then has to pay just to connect additional devices and users. I think this is punitive and leaves a lot of resentment with customers. I don’t know what fraction of Microsoft’s revenue is based on CALs but I think it is fundamentally bad. Why can’t someone at Microsoft be more imaginative and creative with licensing and put an end to all the bearaucratic structures they have built around licensing and which they know still don’t work properly. Ultimately you can’t serve your customer in the way you wish. Microsoft doesn’t have just one type of CAL is has about three which I know of, User CAL, Device CAL and Core CAL.

The sad thing is that nothing will change and I’ll attend more events where Microsoft Executives will ask us all whether we understand Licensing and they’ll get the same answer and nothing will change. I believe Microsoft Licensing is a major reason holding back IT infrastructure investment in SMEs. It’s another reason why Software as a Service has a bright future in my opinion. The choice to CIOs, in say Mid Market companies, is do I spend the money on Microsoft CALs and get that extra functionality or save that money and deploy Linux and maybe get 80% of what I was going to get? I know this is a bold statement but I feel strongly about this and what I see as Microsoft holding me back as a Partner delivering Microsoft Solutions.