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Just had lunch with former colleagues who're still in the IT services game with corporates & gov't. It's clear to them that the reason everyone 'buys Microsoft' is Microsoft have made it easy for customer agents to tick off their 'procurement compliance checklists'. They also enjoy the 'acct mgmt' perks. Few, if any, customer agents have credible technical knowledge. They're just shuffling paperwork & making sure their asses are covered, which MSFT does for them while providing nice meals, etc.
@lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nzOf course, Microsoft have also spent billions (a tiny proportion of their 'return to shareholders') influencing/lobbying gov'ts & corporations to create 'procurement compliance checklists' with special 'carve-outs' for the way MSFT does things, also disadvantaging smaller suppliers who are technically astute, but haven't got the 'smooze' chops. The tail is wagging the dog, and it has to stop.
The disconnect between 'credible technologists' and 'people undertaking procurement' - and the simplistic 'risk aversion' of the latter - for big corporates, institutions, & gov'ts is the only way I can explain the widespread adoption of AWS & MS Azure. Both are mediocre & vastly overpriced services. Buying them the first time is just stupid. After that, your systems are dependent on their proprietary walled gardens and the cost of getting out of that dependence exceeds paying 10-20x too much.
Of course, all that's by design (from the MS & Amazon perspective).
I note that when my (very) tech-savvy colleagues talk about these 'customer representatives' (whom I'm referring to as 'procurement agents'), they *never mention any names*. I think that's because those people are not from the same 'group'. They're not tech people. They're 'management'. They're a different class altogether... and that's given them a certain anonymity & protected them from consequences. That needs to end.