Microsoft Corp continues recklessly to give away its most vital corporate currency, direct feedback on its products. On Friday it announced the formation of an Authorized Support Center program that will greatly extend the moves it has already made to cut itself off from vital large corporate customer feedback by handing over support for Windows NT customers to the likes of ICL Plc and Digital Equipment Corp. Once it has handed support to a third party, any customer feedback will inevitably be filtered, and it is very much in the interests of companies it has chosen – DEC, Hewlett-Packard Co, Olivetti Systems & Services, Unisys Corp, NCR Corp and ICL Sorbus Ltd – to get into a conspiracy with the customer against Microsoft and create extensions and write-arounds for the worst bits of code in products like NT, and sell them to all users. Staff from the support organizations will be trained alongside Microsoft’s own. Microsoft says it has no desire to invest in building up a division , but there are scores of support specialists and dying companies with support organizations in place that it could easily afford to buy.
