[bithead]

As a network engineer I regularly participate and mediate 'vendor support shootouts' between vendors like cisco, juniper, arista, verizon, at&t, and, microsoft - all often amongst each other. It is at times maddeningly frustrating.

Microsoft by far and away is the least responsive in nearly all cases. In one case the project involved thousands of SQL servers and MS was 100% unresponsive - moreover this was not a small customer, but one of microsoft's largest corporate customers. Still nothing but silence. So out with MS for that project. The yearly license fees were well into six figures. Even though MS has a track record of unresponsiveness, the silence was surprising and noteworthy. Why bet money on a horse that doesn't show up.