In a survey I took today as part of my membership on Microsoft's IT Advisory Council, I was asked the following question:
Other than the areas just rated, what other part of the product evaluation experience (excluding trial) do you consider critical to your business that was not listed above?
I answered:
Open source software provides amazing value to our organization because we can test drive it at no licensing costs to our company. This allows us to see how the application fits and gives us time to adjust and prepare for company wide deployment. If the software/system fits, in the past, we have hired VARs to help us implement. We do not get the same length of time to test Microsoft applications.
Licensing costs & fear of legal entanglement is one of the biggest barriers to MS product evaluation.
Another major barrier is how poorly Microsoft products play with other products/standards et cetera.
Whether I am building a communication/collaboration infrastructure or just trying to subscribe an internal user to a customer's Google Calendar, there is no end of frustration to find out that something won't work with a MS product because it isn't part of MS vertically integrated platform.
Artificial barriers to seamless interoperability between competing software products is the best way to alienate me as an end user/decision maker/thought leader.
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