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Microsoft Customers Balk at Hard Sell
HangingChad writes "ComputerWorld is running an article about Microsoft's latest type of sales force scare tactic. Apparently Microsoft is using the new title of 'engagement manager' to attempt sales via intimidation. From the article: 'Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts."'"
RTFA. She was threatening license audits.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The blurb uses a lot of words to say very little.
From TFA, MS is sending their sales people after customers claiming the customer is not in license compliance and they need to send an inspection team in. They are very threatening, implying if the company doesn't comply, they'll face legal prosecution. Once the inspection team gets in, they try to get the customer to buy more products.
I've gotten I think 4 or so of these calls now. I answered the 1st one, and it turned out Redmond was trying to force a sale of MAS90 (Microsoft's accounting package) when I told them I worked for a construction company and we use an accounting package designed for Construction (Timberline) they said "we can make it work for a construction company" He got the hint after repeating "Not interested" 3 times.
I've had Reception add "any calls from Microsoft" to the forward straight to voicemail. If the BSA wants to talk to me about my license counts, I'm not one bit worried.
note that Computer World doesn't call this a "sales force scare tactic" as the headline implies. That term isn't even used in the article.
The article says:
The attorney, suspecting that Lawless' actions were part of an elaborate sales effort, basically told her to back off.
and it adds up:
The fact is, if Microsoft really has reason to believe that a company is using unlicensed copies of its software, it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers.
Telling your sales force to threaten and intimidate customers is a scare tactic designed to sell crap. These idiots think they have the world by the nuts.
The complexities of license compliance and the threat of a BSA raid is one of the best reasons to avoid the non free software offered by M$ and the other BSA member companies.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oracle's sales force hounded me for almost 3 months after I downloaded their free developers edition from their web site. They made the same claims. I wasn't properly licenced for the way I was using the database and I had to buy more products from them. Just for the record, I wasn't using the product at all. I never even got around to installing it. These tactics are well known, inside the software biz and outside it as well. Salesmen sell, that's their job.
Not sure if your licenses are in order? Get legal.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Microsoft has been doing this for years.
... you were out of compliance if:
But not every one of their customers has experienced it. So it is "new" to them.
The reality is that many of Microsoft's customers are "pirates" but only in the sense that they do not keep the kind of records that Microsoft demands when doing an audit.
It isn't enough to have the box the software came in, along with the hologram and the license certificate and so on and on and on.
You also need to be able to PROVE that all of that isn't fake.
And since Microsoft specifically REFUSES to track the license keys and such, the only way to "prove" that the software is legit is to have the original sales receipt from an approved Microsoft vendor.
And that's even if you're not really pirating their software. In past versions, they've made it as easy as possible for companies to pirate their stuff AND as difficult as possible for companies to ensure that they are in compliance without spending lots of hours recording and checking their licenses.
So, even if you had 50 machines and you had bought 50 licenses
#1. Those licenses couldn't be found.
#2. Those licenses weren't matched to receipts from MS vendors.
#3. The machines had been "imaged" with a common image without purchasing the MS license agreement that authorized that.
It's all about driving sales.
MAS90, MAS200, and MAS500 are made by Best Software (formerly Sage Software, though originally Best Software).
MS's accounting software is Dynamics. Redmond did not call you to sell a competitor's product.
Furthermore, MAS products are generally not sold directly by Best, they are sold via resellers.
You just happened to have an agressive sales person contact you, that's all. In no way is that trying to "force a sale." There was no implied threat of lawsuit for failing to have licenses or anything like that.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They never got to that point because AWC's lawyer told them to stick it.
It it works like a BSA raid, M$ will get a court order for an inspection based on some kind of "evidence", which could be anything from an anonymous phone call by a disgruntled employee to some program the secretary installed phoning home. AWC would then have the choice of paying for the inspection or another even more expensive "service" from a list M$ offers. The raid itself would involve massive disruption of work.
This is the appropriate response.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Neither my SA or EA say anything about "independent 3rd party audit". It says MS has the right to audit. Period. And unless your a Global 2000 company, good luck getting them to change so much as one puncutation mark on their contract.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't see much of a difference. The BSA is just a FUD agency anyways. They have no authority over anyone, you can very well have your security guards throw them out as they would any other trespassers. The BSA is paid by Microsoft and the other big cheeses to spread fear, but the only authority in any licensing dispute, or piracy claim for that matter, is a court of law.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
My experience with Microsoft marketing has been pretty bad so far.
.NET promotion thing they were doing for students. We were promised a free copy of Visual Studio 7 if we attended, which I thought sounded pretty good and worth sitting through some ads for. After two hours of being marketed to, sitting through tons of stuff that really didn't interest me much (for example advertising their new tablet PC for 45 minutes when it was supposed to be an information session on .NET), what happens? They get up there and have the gall to announce that, "Oh, sorry, the VS.NET CDs weren't ready, so we don't have any to give you... but we'll send them to you." I wrote my address, never received anythign.. (after emailing them even)
My first-hand impression is that they will do anything including lie to your face to get you to listen to their latest gimmick.
This is totally aside from the fact that I don't particularly like their software. I admit that because of this fact I'm probably biased, but my ACTUAL experience directly with the people is pretty bad too, so it totally doesn't help the case.
Anyways, first thing that happened: As a student, I attended a
Another thing that happened: I attended a conference on real-time computing. I thought I'd check out a talk called "Choosing a real-time operating system". I figured it would be an interesting overview on all the options out there (and there are a lot of interesting ones!), but after I got in there and they closed to door: "Hi, so this is an information session on how to choose a Microsoft real-time Operating System." Turned out it was for choosing between CE and XP. What a load of shit.. I was really pissed.
So all in all, my impression is not at all good. They run their company like jerks, and their sales reps are jerks.
Frankly I think some of their products are pretty good. A lot of their development utilities are really nice. XP works pretty well for it's target audience. But damn... stop lying to me and trying to trick me. It's not cool.
Rotten Effort
Don Tennant Today's Top Stories or Other IT Management Stories
May 08, 2006 (Computerworld) -- It's bad enough when Microsoft strong-arms other software vendors into submission as a means of thwarting competition. But when it engages in underhanded tactics to intimidate users in order to land a software deal, we have a very disturbing situation on our hands. And someone needs to have the guts to speak out about it.
Fortunately, someone has. Last week, Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing Co., brought to my attention an alarming business practice that shows Microsoft at its shoddy and arrogant worst.
AWC was contacted several weeks ago by Janet Lawless, a software asset management engagement manager at Microsoft, who claimed that "a preliminary review of [AWC's software licensing] information indicates that your company may not be licensed properly." Lawless urged AWC to "understand that the potential inconsistency in licensing is an urgent matter and needs immediate attention." She wanted to send a consultant to AWC to conduct an inventory of its installed software.
Frantz was stunned. He says he always errs on the side of caution with respect to software licenses. He does regular audits and maintains extensive records of purchases, license keys and registration codes. Frantz had no doubt that he was 100% compliant. When he told Lawless that, she ratcheted up the threatening tone of her e-mail correspondence.
"Simply commenting on your licensing environment does not address our concerns in a tangible, proven manner," she wrote. "We continue to believe that Auto Warehousing may not be licensed properly. Since this is a compliance issue, I am obligated to notify an officer of Auto Warehousing of the situation and the significant risk your organization may be subject to by not resolving this situation in a timely manner."
At that point, Frantz got his corporate attorney involved. The attorney suggested that an olive branch be proffered to avoid legal action, so Frantz offered to send Lawless detailed records of all purchases of Microsoft software in the past five years. But Lawless blew that off as well. She seemed determined to get a consultant into the IT bowels of AWC.
"Thank you for your offer to send your purchase records to me," she wrote, "however our Software Asset Management (SAM) program is the only unbiased way to create an accurate baseline and resolve this matter."
That did it. Frantz informed Lawless that he wasn't going to waste anymore time with her, and he left the matter with his attorney. The attorney, suspecting that Lawless' actions were part of an elaborate sales effort, basically told her to back off.
Indeed, according to Microsoft's Web site, the responsibility of someone with Lawless' title of "engagement manager" is to "perform as an integrated member of the account team, drive business development and closing of new services engagements in targeted accounts." So why was someone in a sales position leaning so hard on AWC about a supposed licensing compliance concern?
When I phoned Lawless to find out, she referred me to Microsoft's PR machine. The responses I got through that channel stressed that Microsoft's aim is to help customers navigate the complexities of software licensing and that one of the roles of engagement managers is to assist in that effort by informing customers of a potential licensing risk. I was told to attribute the responses to Lawless.
The fact is, if Microsoft really has reason to believe that a company is using unlicensed copies of its software, it sics the Business Software Alliance on the company. It doesn't turn the matter over to one of its sales managers.
The folks at Microsoft should have done their homework. They would have realized that trying to intimidate Dale Frantz would be a fruitless effort. And what a rotten fruitless effort it was.
If you are a "good customer" of Microsoft's then you have a LOT of time / effort / data invested in their products. Migrating to anything else is VERY FUCKING EXPENSIVE. Not just in money, but in time and effort and all the tiny incompatibilities that will result in your users asking what the fuck you were thinking when you decided to drop Microsoft.
So the easiest source of revenue is for Microsoft to "audit" their "good customers" and hit them with a bill for the most common errors that IT departments make.That's not uncommon.
The problem is that Microsoft is threatening those customers who DO care and DO spend the time and money to stay legit.
AND
Microsoft is NOT putting any time / effort / money into providing any easy way for their "good customers" to track their licenses (or even validate that a license is legit).
This is Microsoft we're talking about. They have BILLIONS of dollars. They have very smart people. They should be able to work up a system where I can enter each and every license I have and validate that it is legit and that it is mine.
But they aren't interested in that. That approach would cost them money to implement and it would result in fewer sales because "good customers" would already have had Microsoft approve their licenses.
And that is why this whole situation is so fucked up. It's all about Microsoft making the situation as difficult as possible so they can wring every last dollar from it.
Here's an example:
You buy 50 workstations from Dell. Each comes with WinXP.
You then buy a retail version of WinXP. That's 51 licenses for 50 boxes.
You image one box using the full retail license and dump that image on the other 49.
You're out of compliance because Microsoft licensed Dell to only license each copy of WinXP to a specific machine. The licenses are non-transferable. You've just "pirated" 49 copies of WinXP. That's 49 licenses at $200 retail
And that's if you're 100% legit on 50 machines. And provided that you can "prove" that that 1 retail copy wasn't also "stolen".
The blurb on slashdot, is not very telling and about the worst part of the article. If you read the article you will see a clear case of Microsoft trying to extort a company into paying for their professional services. The best line is where MS claims this is the only unbiased way to resolve the issue. The extortion is clearly criminal. if there are people who actually bought into this act, it would be a good time to look in Criminal and Civil RICO.
...where MS tried to force IT shops to upgrade sooner? They declared that upgrade pricing would be valid for six months only, after which shops that hadn't upgraded would pay full boat. IT managers pretty much told them to go to hell. It was the best thing to happen for Linux as a server platform in corporations all at once since the 2.6 kernel release. I recall a quote from on manager saying, "This would give the control over millions of dollars of my budget -- to be spent within a few months of whenever they demand it. That's just not going to happen."
As I recall, Microsoft backed off that stance almost immedately but it was a bit late. They woke up a large number of shops to their "single source vulnerability".
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
What else is new? I understand the next time I boot the Windows partition on this box, & it tries to get security updates, I will be challenged to prove that XP is genuine. Well, it came on the machine from HP. What the fork does MS want? Think I'll burn the FreeBSD 6.1 install DVD for AMD64, first. I think FreeBSD would be happy to be where the XP & recovery partitions are. Then I can upgrade the Breezy patition to Dapper. F' 'em. MS gives me the creeps.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
However, at the last check (about 5 months ago), not a single one provided the pretty integrated solution that Outlook and Exchange does. At best, they require a separate plugin for Outlook. I found that adding a plugin which sucks to a PIM which sucks does not tend to reduce the overall level of sucking - indeed, with any significant number of client PCs and a requirement that everyone shares their calendars in an integrated system, Exchange rapidly starts to look attractive.
At worst, they provide nothing more than a web-based interface (yes, this will get screams from those who "must" use Outlook), with one or more of the following:
If you're lucky, you'll be able to get a usable solution and find a web-based system which doesn't completely suck and you'll get buy-in from the rest of the business.
Now watch this get modded into oblivion because it doesn't tow the party line that There is a Good Open Source Replacement for Everything....