Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by starter_john 4677 days ago
Hi Sukuriant,

As a developer, I share the concern that one's work has value and should not be 'given away'. But the reality is our work is a commodity, and a business can use and sell commodities in the most profitable competitive way.

So this just means moving pieces around on the table a bit. You can still make money, and in fact save money and make more money by focusing on the true alignment with your customer that Microsoft is veering away from.

From what I know of the Enterprise, new versions of Windows are a huge risk and expense, hardly the big picture alignment with the customer that a company should have.

Does the Enterprise customer want to deal with a desktop Windows 8 rollout?

Instead, borrow from the SaaS playbook by focusing on support and continuous releases instead of gigantic monolithic product releases that upend the universe and cause CTOs migraines around the globe.

To replace Windows license revenue, simply "give away razors, sell blades" by replacing Windows license (contract) revenue with support (contract) revenue. The support is provided anyway, of course you don't tell Fortune 500 CTO to pound sand if there's a bug.

So just change the game a bit. Make the same (or more) money. Go from being hated (UGH another windows upgrade) to loved (WHOO MSFT Open Sourced Windows! frees up budget for new Windows application development let's buy some SQL Server!)

And in practical terms, here's what the invoice lineitem looks like (share with your boss??!?!)

SKU-100 | $99/year | Enterprise-wide Guaranteed Bug Response 1 hour Turnaround / per user / annual subscription - Open Windows 2015

1 comments

Microsoft's corporate strategy is well outside of my control or understanding. I only mentioned being a Microsoft employee because in conversations about my company, I have to tell people that I work for them. That said, I was speaking in the general sense, not in the specific sense of Microsoft