How to Negotiate with Microsoft: Proven Strategies to help you Maximise Value and Minimise Costs

How to Negotiate with Microsoft

Proven Strategies to help you Maximise Value and Minimise Costs

Mark Bartrick

Copyright © 2023 Mark Bartrick

eBook Edition

ISBN: 978-1-916820-14-2

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored, in any form or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author.

About the Author

Mark Bartrick is a negotiation coach and lives in Leicestershire in the UK.

He has been helping businesses negotiate contracts for over 30 years.

Mark has worked as a Negotiation Consultant for Gartner Inc, and was also a Sourcing and Vendor Management Analyst at Forrester Research Inc. As well as publishing research about negotiation and sourcing best practices, Mark also helped many Gartner and Forrester clients save money by teaching them how to negotiate better deals with their software and technology suppliers.

Mark now has his own negotiation consulting business which specialises in helping CIOs and IT Procurement leaders negotiate better deals with enterprise software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.

You can contact Mark via his business website www.scr21.co.uk or message him via his Profile page on LinkedIn.

Who is this Book for?

This book is aimed at every business or organisation that uses Microsoft software and associated services.

It will especially appeal to any CIOs, IT Directors or Heads of Procurement who are keen to optimise their budgets and drive maximum value from their spend with Microsoft.

There’s no doubt that Microsoft’s software and services are both popular and useful. Many businesses and organisations across the world use Microsoft products and services, and Microsoft is often deeply embedded in many daily work tasks.

That leaves many IT and Procurement leaders thinking they are powerless when it comes to negotiating a better deal with Microsoft.

But that’s not the case.

Even when Microsoft is the only game in town there are still many negotiation levers you can use to get them to move on contractual terms, pricing, discounts and concessions.

This book will help you prepare, plan and then optimise your next Microsoft negotiation.

Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction to Microsoft

Company History

Financials

Sales Channels

Sales Culture

Chapter 2: Microsoft’s Products/Services

Product and Service Overview

Software

Microsoft Cloud

Services

Chapter 3: Microsoft’s Pricing

List Prices

Pricing Variances

Chapter 4: Microsoft’s Paperwork

Contracts & Agreements

Software Support Contracts

Software Assurance

Premier Support

Unified Support

Azure Cloud Contracts

Services Contracts

Chapter 5: Negotiation preparation

Do your Homework

Key Elements to Consider

Microsoft’s Sales Process

Managing your Microsoft Sales Rep

Chapter 6: Negotiating Paperwork

Always Take Legal Advice

Microsoft Software Contracts

Microsoft Cloud Contracts

Microsoft Services Contracts

Chapter 7:  Negotiating Software Pricing

Discount Options

Negotiating Trade-in Credits

Negotiating True-ups/downs

Chapter 8: Negotiating Support Costs

Microsoft Support

Software Assurance

Support Costs for SaaS

Unified Support

Chapter 9: Negotiating Cloud Costs

Factors that Affect Azure Cloud Pricing

Azure Cloud Negotiation

Azure Discounting

Cloud Contract Nuances

Microsoft’s Cloud Competitors

Chapter 10: Negotiating Services Costs

Steps to Take

Services Discounts

Chapter 11: Bringing It All Together

Negotiate the Total Price

Negotiating Beyond Price

Chapter 12: Post Sale

Post-Negotiation Relationships are Important

Strategies for Maintaining Good Relationships with Microsoft

Dealing with Potential Conflicts

Chapter 13: Negotiating Audits

Audits are Inevitable

The Importance of SAM

Negotiating an Audit

Chapter 14: Conclusion

Chapter 1:

Introduction to Microsoft

Company History:

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington. It is one of the largest software companies in the world, with over 200,000 employees.

Microsoft's best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer, Bing and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. It then rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees.

Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016.

In addition, Microsoft also offers a variety of cloud services marketed under the name Azure. These cloud services allow organizations to run their applications and store their data in a secure and scalable environment, while minimizing the need for expensive on-premises hardware and IT resources.

More recently, starting in 2019, Microsoft has been developing a long-term partnership with OpenAI to accelerate Artificial Intelligence (AI) breakthroughs. These will include new AI-powered experiences across Microsoft’s consumer and enterprise software products, and developments