Software king of the world Microsoft is risking hacking off its partners again with another range of unpopular changes to its benefits.
For those who missed it, Microsoft infuriated its partner community earlier this year by announcing it would ditch its internal use rights (IUR) benefits, only to change its mind after a backlash.
Now Vole has quietly announced it will scrap its Deployment Planning Services from February 2020, along with its Software Assurance training voucher scheme.
Currently, if customers have an Enterprise Agreement with Software Assurance, they can use vouchers they receive in exchange for consulting services from partners. Partners must be qualified to provide Deployment Planning Services, which involves only the planning of deployment, though it often offers more lucrative opportunities for the partner with the customer.
Vole said it is “consolidating its programmatic deployment planning assistance to a single approach”, and will instead direct partners to its FastTrack programme.
Microsoft said: “Microsoft is investing in new ways to help customers deploy and use our products and services.
“As we adapt to new customer scenarios, we’re updating Software Assurance benefits starting in February 2020 to ensure it stays relevant and useful to customers. Once customers transition to cloud, they will receive many of the same advantages of Software Assurance, only delivered as part of Microsoft’s online services.
“As more businesses worldwide migrate to the cloud, we’re continuously evaluating how we can best support partners.
“To keep pace with this evolution, we’re updating Software Assurance benefits starting in February 2020. This means that our benefits will increasingly be delivered via Microsoft’s online services”, Vole said,
