Partners Get Candid About Microsoft
/**/ /**/
The last year has held many changes for Microsoft. The software giant continued to venture into the retail and consumer hardware space, and under new CEO Satya Nadella made huge cuts in divisions of its workforce. So what do partners think of the new, leaner Microsoft of 2014, and its leader, Nadella?
’We’ve been Microsoft partners for a while and watched a lot of the transitions. I think the new leadership is doing a great job, I know a lot of the Microsoft employees that got terminated don’t think so, but I think he is trying to make a leaner machine, Tech Sage President and CEO John Hill said about Nadella.
Chris Timmons of ASysTech said his company is finally seeing some changes they have been requesting from Microsoft for a quite a while. ’One of the demands that’s been around for a while is being able to mix licenses,’ he said. ’Now they’re doing it. So, it looks like he’s kind of now trying to listen to [what] the people that are making them money are asking for.’
RampUp Technology’s Gus Chiarello predicts Microsoft will move in a different direction, becoming a major player in the networking space through building on applications like Lync. ’The hosted providers are going to have more and more challenges. They integrate with Lync now, that’s great, but Microsoft owns Lync. They own Skype. They own this stuff.’
Eric Rockwell of centrexIT is hopeful, but not yet sold on the new Microsoft. ’They’ve made a lot of progress, but we haven’t seen the results of that progress yet,’ he said.
PUBLISHED SEPT. 30, 2014