[Marsymars]

> I don't understand why anyone would want to deal with Microsoft as a vendor if they don't have to.

It can bill to our Azure sub and I don't have to go through the internal bureaucracy of purchasing a new product/service from a new vendor.

[rdiddly]

I would also add that the models they supply through Azure Foundry are covered under my employer's existing customer agreement, by which MS is not allowed to train models on our data (which might include IP of the company or its clients). For organizations worried about that, it's nice & cozy.

[taormina]

They just altered this deal for everyone else. Wonder how long they will wait before default opting you all into training too?

[taormina]

PSA: You only have about 36 hours left to opt-out!

[hx8]

Bingo. Github Copilot is mostly for organizations that have an existing Azure bill and would rather see that go up then get a new vendor bill. Professional middlemen.

[drewda]

This is pretty straightforward compared to the giant universe of companies that resell Microsoft services.

The number of intermediaries that some customers, especially governmental agencies, go through to get just an Azure bill can be wild...

[rorylawless]

I’ve recently been unwillingly exposed to this side of things. It’s truly an insane, there must be a better way?

[Create]

It's BASIC. LET them GOTO jail (BSD also comes to mind)

(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption... ) The upside: the EU finally got a prosecutor. And last but not least everybody forgot why the Baby Bells were born.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

If you’ve ever had to be part of the frankly batshit insane procurement process that some organizations force you to gauntlet through, it becomes a very obvious and appealing option to do this

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Ah, the AWS Marketplace procurement model, where products mostly exist so that you can line item things through Amazon rather than going through a lengthy procurement process

[isqueiros]

Not surprised to see this is common. At my company basically everyone and their mother are using Claude Code via Bedrock, despite us having company-wide Windsurf, Copilot and ChatGPT Enterprise accounts

[embedding-shape]

That sounds different, the parent is saying they're using that because then no new billing and stuff has to be negotiated/setup, but in your case everything is already setup and people have access, they just chose to use something else?

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Indeed. The use case is like this: I'm a Devops/Platform/SRE/Infra/WhateverYouCallAWSAdminInYourOrg at BigCorp and end users are asking me to use software XYZ. It's on the AWS Marketplace. I have two choices. I could either

1. Go through a 1-2 month procurement process where I have to deal with not only the vendor's sales team on who I'm buying from but also probably multiple teams in my BigCorp. Vendor sales team wants to feel relevant and so I'm sitting in at least one meeting where I'm telling them I just want to buy your shit make it as fast as possible. But then the people in my BigCorp likely not only don't understand why the software is necessary, but need to feel relevant and as such will make me fight through bureaucratic hurdles. I have to get compliance involved. Finance involved. If there's a procurement team I have to get them involved. Probably there's a security questionnaire that my bigcorp's security team uses. I have to send that to the vendor's sales people. They have to send it to their security folks. Security folks on their end have to complete it and send it back. I have to send approvals up the chain on my end, after I've successfully convinced some clueless nontechnical user why software XYZ is important and no, the shit half baked thing we already have doesn't work.

OR alternatively:

2. I can go to the AWS marketplace, click a button, and now my AWS bill goes up X thousands of dollars per month and none of the bullshit from 1 is required. Because AWS is already an approved vendor. Everyone except perhaps someone monitoring the AWS bill for large increases is happy and doesn't care (well, maybe the security team does, but hopefully they aren't tattling on you to the procurement people who have nothing to do and want to stick their fingers in the process and we can make that process go quick), and I just need to tell that person that we are doing it.

It's not always the exact narrative I just laid out, but the gist of it is pretty much procurement at every bigcorp.

[steve1977]

It's understandable but sad that this will often be the reason.

[qwertytyyuu]

It’s got pretty good integration into vscode and you can bypass key anyway

[charkubi]

Microsoft's USP in one sentence.