Microsoft doesn't care about small businesses

In our line of work, it is not uncommon to move between clients, some are large behemoths, others are little mom & pop shops and some will be Start-ups.

Moving between a company with some 50,000+ employees to one with around 50 employees, the first being 125+ years old, full of red-tape, the second is a fresh start-up, with very little formal processes and very little red tape. The differences can be refreshing, especially when it comes to red-tape.

Another change can be the money they have available, or more specifically, how easy it is to get them to spend it. A big company will likely have more money overall, but getting them to spend it can be a challenge that is worthy of a full-time position all on it’s own… A start-up is pretty much at the opposite end of the scale, they will likely be cash rich and getting them to spend it takes far less work.

Getting used to how 3rd parties treat you

At a large enterprise, with multiple private data centres and potentially hundreds of sites globally, you get used to speaking directly to Microsoft (or other Tier 1 partner) when something isn’t working or you want advice or you want to buy something.

Heck, when you’re working for a big old enterprise with a decent credit line, BigTech will do almost anything to get you to spend some of that credit with them. You will likely have a dedicated Account Manager and access to one or many technical sales engineers (or other title – essentially, the folks that know how stuff works). You will have similar levels of support from all of your tier 1 suppliers, further to this, you have vendors falling over themselves trying to get your business. You get used to it.

Moving to a smaller company, even a cash rich start-up, well getting used to how you’re treat by what you might formally consider to be Tier 1 partners is tough.

Companies like Microsoft for example, well, these folks just won’t speak to you at all unless you’re spending vast sums of money with them. They want you to use Resellers, but most of these middle-men type companies are built around upselling.

A Tier 1 Reseller doesn’t want to sell you 60x MS Office licenses, they want you to take an Office 365 subscription with a weeks worth of professional services to ‘help‘ migrate to an Office 365 environment.

So getting used to how Vendors treat you at different sized companies is irksome to say the least. The worst thing is that when you move between these companies, you occasionally find that you have this amazing Account Manager at Microsoft (for example) whilst with one Enterprise and then they Ghost you when you’re working with a smaller client, yet the next time you’re in an enterprise, they’re falling over themselves to remind you how useful they were previously…

Microsoft are not the only company that do this, but the trouble I’ve had trying to help clients manage their small licensing pools with regards to Microsoft products is unbelievable!