It's that time of year when Microsoft convenes their annual partner and sales conferences, and announces their marketing themes for their new fiscal year. We can expect a blizzard of press releases and articles about innovations from Microsoft. And that's good for our enterprise clients who are evaluating their Microsoft investments and innovation is a topic that resonates with them. More often than not, our Clients are looking for the value from their Microsoft investments. Our advice to Microsoft: you're not in the features and functions business, you're in the ROI business. Regardless of how many cool new features Microsoft creates, ...
Read More
Strategy 4: Defend yourself against Influence Optimize persuasiveness Preparation. Analyze your BATNA – knowing your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement, enables you to understand your walk away options. Evaluate the ZOPA – knowing the Zone Of Possible Agreement will help you avoid wasting time evaluating offers that are outside of your consideration. Investigate all issues at stake and know how to position them above the line or below the line. Know when to pull in above the line items on a quid pro quo basis to use as sticks to claim value and/or control the bargaining table. Know when to pull in below the line items on a quid pro ...
Read More
In their quaterly financials (Balance Sheet), Microsoft reports an item called "unearned revenue" and defines it like this: (This from the MSFT 10-K filed Jul 30, 2009.) Unearned Revenue Unearned revenue is comprised of the following items: Volume Licensing Programs Represents customer billings for multi-year licensing arrangements, paid either upfront or annually at the beginning of each billing coverage period, which are accounted for as subscriptions with revenue recognized ratably over the billing coverage period. Undelivered Elements Represents the right to receive unspecified upgrades/enhancements of Microsoft Internet Explorer on a ...
Read More
Microsoft has quietly launched "Office Online" this week. Should you care? www.businessinsider.com is one of my favorite Microsoft-watching websites. Their quick and pithy slideshow handles the basics around Office Online nicely: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft--office-online-2010-6 My take on this for our enterprise clients: Microsoft has been pitching an interesting future roadmap for "Office Online" but so far they are still tying real-world business functionality to requiring continued Software Assurance for Office. For some clients in some limited end-user requirements, it's worth evaluating. But for most "knowledge workers" ...
Read More
Is this the beginning of the end of the phone call? Is voice communications a dying breed? Perhaps not on its last breath, but certainly less relevant than it once was. Case in point: My phone hardly ever rings. OK, so maybe no one wants to talk to me, which is entirely possible, and I certainly attend plenty of conference calls, but seriously, most of my communication is via email and texting. I admit to preferring to communicate with my colleagues and clients and suppliers via email because it is self documenting and asynchronous. I would even argue that voice mail is becoming increasing obsolete. And, frankly, I don’t really want to talk ...
Read More
A few weeks ago, Sony announced that it was ending production of the 3.5” floppy disk. I have boxes upon boxes of these little plastic memory devices, some with labels barely hanging on by a glue remnant. Sure, I haven’t had a computer with a floppy drive in almost a decade, but if the disks are being shelved, disk drives are soon to follow. What happens to my data? This isn’t the first time that technical obsolescence has affected my life. I’ve already repurchased my original PacMan Fever album three times as technology leapt from vinyl to cassette to compact disc. In its fourth iteration, I was able to convert from CD to MP3 on my own – ...
Read More
Microsoft has a very sophisticated set of tools and processes to set, manage, deliver, and customize their volume licensing prices. Each month, Microsoft generates and disseminates an updated master price list via a secure portal. This list includes every possible permutation of product, license versus software assurance, new versus renewal, 1, 2, or 3 years remaining, enterprise edition, standard edition, level A, B, C, D, Enterprise Agreement (EA), Select Agreement, Open licensing, and on and on and on... literally, tens of thousands of unique line items are updated monthly. Then, Microsoft and their LARs (Large Account Resellers) and ...
Read More
Clearly, Main Street–and the government–has Wall Street in its crosshairs. So now is the perfect time for organizations to review their agreements and show their shareholders that they are willing to take fiscal responsibility department by department wherever and whenever possible. One way to do this is to negotiate better deals across the enterprise. You can hone your IT negotiation skills with renowned industry experts from NET(net), the world leader in IT Investment Optimization. NET(net) University's Negotiation Program, conducted at DePaul's O'Hare campus in Chicago, is a two-day program dedicated to developing the theory and practice ...
Read More
It's been said there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. To this list I propose to add "not really a lie, technically, but it certainly isn't the whole truth and some people might consider it downright misleading" A case in point: Microsoft sales teams are fond of saying that "Enterprise Agreement customers receive an approximately 15 percent platform discount' versus other licensing options. Technically, this is true: if you were to purchase exactly the same mix of products via some other licensing program such as Select, you would pay more. But it's also somewhat irrelevant and misleading when it's used as an argument ...
Read More
For Jordan, it was unabashed practice and, in fact, failure which helped him succeed. By his own admission, he “missed more than 9000 shots in [his] career… lost almost 300 games. 26 times, [he’s] been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed… failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” But he continued to devote as much time as possible to improving. Even his contract allowed him an exception from standard NBA terms and conditions which gave him the ability to play the game anytime and anywhere he wanted, now known as the “love-of-the-game clause.” Just about every other winning athlete has this same mentality ...
Read More
