It probably depends on your personal level of skepticism as to your view of Microsoft Corp’s latest decision to get out of the servicing game. Is it sheer laziness or a brave admission by the firm that it is unable to be all things to all men? Ordinarily, the companies that have been chosen to look after Microsoft’s software and customers would be competitors, rivals chasing the same accounts, but business has resulted in stranger bed-fellows. Microsoft’s latest strategy, which runs under The New World of Computing banner, effectively means that members of the newly formed Authorized Support Center – Digital Equipment Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, ICL Sorbus, NCR Corp, Olivetti Sistemas y Servicios SA and Unisys Corp, will look after the servicing and customer care side of Microsoft’s business. Representatives from each company will train along side Microsoft staff before being allowed to ply their trade with their respective customers. Microsoft has been known to be somewhat selective with the truth to its own customers at times, so why this sudden appearance of openness? And what of the partners? Are they afraid of being duped or misled in some way? European marketing manager George Thaw disagreed. Microsoft has no history or skill in the service arena. Its just something we’ve never been very good at. He argued that it would simply take too much time and effort to set up an effective service division. And when there are others out there doing it far better than we can, why not let them take care of it for us. And he said he was well versed in the fragility of any relationship. Of course, both sides of the partnership are potentially vulnerable, but the first attempt by either party to double-cross the other will be the last. But is Microsoft effectively handing its competitors a huge slice of its business on a plate when there are numerous companies that specialize in servicing and customer care that are ripe for acquisition and which Microsoft could buy out of petty cash? By owning its servicing division, Microsoft would effectively be able to maintain a tighter grip on its empire. John Leigh, research director at the Gartner Group said the information technology service sector is now big business; big, global and growing. Leigh estimated that a third of all information technology external customer spend worldwide in 1995 was attributable to services, which amounted to some $1.86bn. Its impossible to gauge the true value of the sector, but there appears to be widespread acknowledgement that it is indeed big, and rapidly getting bigger. From the end user’s perspective, it’s imperative they have access to system support. The more organizations capable of providing this the better. But as is the nature of working closely with a specific technology, the six partners will be in an ideal position to discover any weak links in Microsoft’s system. It will be the partners and not Microsoft that will receive the customer feedback. And whether this information is relayed to their own respective development teams, or Microsoft’s remains to be seen.
