How do you make money? How about selling your database software suite for a tens of thousands of dollars per license? How about changing your volume licensing scheme to be so convoluted as to be vexing to even the most seasoned IT accounting professional? How about treating your mom and pop shops like complete trash while sending your mega-corporation clients on sales junkets to Hawaii?
I’ve been an IT professional for over 20 years. I’ve worked with enterprise-class Microsoft products like Server, SQL, SharePoint, Active Directory, Exchange, etc. for over 10 years, and I’ve been actively involved in licensing “true ups” for the last 5. I’ve never seen a company contort themselves in ways like Microsoft to keep a customer happy, but in the end, they still make hundreds of thousands of dollars off of their clients for what? A license?
I’ve worked in mom and pop shops who spent $500 for a single server license while large corporations with thousands of servers pay less than half of that, and while I’m not complaining about the difference between single vs. volume licensing, I am complaining about how they treat these two customers respectively. Mom and pop shop wants support for their product? Call India, wait for a call back, muddle through a possible fix, get frustrated. Corporation wants support? You get a TAM to make a call, you get an English-speaking support rep on the phone in minutes, and you get regular follow up.
Microsoft isn’t in the business of customer happiness, they’re in the business of making money, even if that means a program riddled with security holes.
RE: Microsoft isn’t in the business of customer happiness, they’re in the business of making money,
Which leads to the next question: How do you make money of your customers aren’t happy with your product?
Well, since Microsoft IS making money, obviously, customers are somewhat satisfied with what they have... otherwise, they’d have gone with another product long time ago.