Microsoft partners beware: Action Pack to be retired in 2025 Microsoft is to discontinue the Microsoft Action Pack and Microsoft Learning Pack on January 21, 2025, sending partners off to potentially pricier and cloudier options. The Action Pack and Learning Pack, alongside Silver or Gold Membership, gave Microsoft partners access to many on-premises licenses for the company's software …
Eventually, M$ will effectively own every business on the planet -- insofar as M$ can shut any or all of them down instantly with the flick of a virtual switch or an "upgrade" unless they fork out. Talk about sleepwalking into a protection racket.
Time to look at some viable alternatives, I'm sick of Microsoft, they treat resellers like crap already & now to take a bit of the cake we do enjoy away just leaves an even bitter taste in my mouth!!! Anyone know of any real alternatives to MS Office and Exchange these days? I still have a Lotus Notes system going, however, that is aging in time (though never gives me or the client any trouble, unlike the MS cloudy options!)?
Snarling, Knashing of Teeth :-(
That was my initial reaction but I've gone through the list again. It's not all that bad.
It's just me, so just need a bunch of dev stuff. Looking at the 'Launch':
The good:
Still get VS Professional subscription (though drops from 3 to 1). That comes with Windows licences (server and client) for test/dev. I've no need for a full server licence. PCs mostly come with Windows licences/
PowerBI Premium - 4 users. Good news for me as I'm a BI developer and want to do more PowerBI. Odd that you only get 4 licences when it's mostly 5 for other stuff.
The bad:
Azure credits cut to $700 per year but they're 'bulk' so I assume I can pay up front for the production server I use for a web server and get the discount.
Office licences via 365 Business Premium - means a cut in storage from 5TB to 1TB per account. Pain as I've uploaded a load of ripped DVDs that now need a new home.
More effing change - this stuff makes work for very little benefit. Wish they'd just leave alone.
Hate to be the one but...
What were you expecting?
Someone already pointed out that Goog has bizarre ToS and M$ clearly want more control and reliance on their cloud but whilst they see line go up they restrict what you get whether your a customer or a partner.
This is also why if you dig into their AZ exams all it is is a collection of lessons into learning all their marketing names and tricks, you can see what their future goals are with the training they provide.
How long until you're charges to login to the azure portal and then charged for the time that session is live? Then when that is in place and accepted this will be the model for the OS you have on your PC that you purchased, You'll sign in and then the timer ticks.
You know it ultimately coming but everyone needs to sign up !!
All partner programs are cults that make Scientology look like book club. Unfortunately, the vendors have gotten so big it's not a partner program. Partners are more or less equal. There was a time back in the 1980s and 1990s where pissing off you partners would end your company. Now the big players are too big to need partners, customers, or employees.
Also Partners are becoming less and less useful. Many barely add any value except to their own coffets.
As someone who sees both sides of partners I am sick of them ripping off customers. We often have to unscramble the miselling where customers have trusted so called experts. The trouble is the industry is still wedded to the partner, distributor, reseller model, all taking their cut and adding lots of "value "......
the basic 'Launch benefits' has no Windows licences - odd decision. Big leap in price to Core. Nice to have PowerBI Premium though. Guess I'll start doing more with Linux server or just have not quite licenced Windows servers for dev.
My renewal is end of September, so good timing. With a MS doing this and a Labour government about to increase taxes, could be a good excuse to retire.
To me the on-prem vs. cloud argument is a sideshow next to the real argument: control over the stability of your IT assets and infrastructure. If an organization's IT department is a rancid dumpster fire (and many are) there may be few downsides to losing this control. But for those of us who run and have run tightly-managed IT ships and put up strong availability numbers abandoning on-prem (which this is pushing) demands that we shave at least two 9's of availability off for the greater good of Microsoft's stock P/E ratio.
And it's not like it saves us significant hassle. Managing Microsoft365 + Azure is arguably worse than managing on-prem systems, and the full scale of it hits you square in the face even for SMB environments because they aggressively opt your users into everything unless you manage to slap their digital hands away first. No thanks. I've been conscientiously dumping Microsoft for years as they are simply no longer a foundational requirement for almost anything anymore. Even with the far less-mature management tools, we manage to do far better with Macs for desktops and laptops. Life is not perfect, but it's good. I no longer bite my nails every time we roll out security updates. Financially, we still come out ahead paying for the far more expensive machines because of the lower management and support overhead. Plus it makes a lot of the users happier, and that's a big thing when you actually see it happen - it makes the whole workplace better. I've been dreaming for many, many years of a viable corporate Linux desktop, but I still think it's a bridge too far. I'm all-in on Linux servers and especially NAS systems, which scale down the management requirements tremendously and have almost microscopic attack surfaces by comparison.
Actually... as a guy that uses only Linux at home, I'm liking Windows 11 better than 10. I've noticed quite a few bug fixes and improvements.
For example, copy&paste seems to actually work now, most of the time, instead of pulling something random out of its ass from 30 minutes ago when I pasted.
The one thing I didn't like (stupid new file manager rightclick menus) was reverted with a registry edit.
(well, my co-workers tell me there's slightly less swearing)
You should never need to mess around with the registry (or any form of config file) to have the UI work correctly: the whole OS and it's UI should be logically presented, intuitive, easy to use and then just get out of your way to let you do what you need to do.
If MS just provided themes to give you a fully functioning Win 2000/Win7/XP etc. front end with all the relevant menus and functionality present they wouldn't get so much hate. I don't want to go to seven different menu screens to change my audio settings, I just want to go to the Control Panel and do it there. Add new features by all means, and deprecate one's which cannot be updated further, but if it's being deprecated due to a technical or compatibility issue and is still used or needed, at least replace it with something that works and has the same or better functionality. Changing something just for the sake of changing it is dumb and doesn't benefit anyone, especially the end users.
Why allow Microsoft to control and dictate your company's software spend upwards towards the Cloud?
European companies can continue to buy (not rent) pre-owned / second-hand perpetual MS software at heavily discounted prices.
Visit: www.discount-licensing.com to see how much savings your company can make on pre-owned perpetual MS software.
"... evolving the partner benefits offerings to provide partners with the tools and support they need to continue to lead the way in the shifting tech landscape."
Let me translate this to normal (American) English:
"We are altering the partner benefits deal to save us money. Pray I alter it no further."
Oh joy, will need to do some number crunching to figure out what I'll do with my business. Might be cheaper for me just to switch to buying 365 rather than using the 5 x E3 licenses I was getting through Action Pack IUR. Don't use much else, but it's always been handy having the tech support incidents.
> handy having the tech support incidents.
Really? Every time I try to get a response it hits a dead end of dumb. Takes weeks to get no where and by that time I have found a way around it.
I been a "partner" since 2003. Still have a heap of CDs somewhere. Loosing the option to install the OS on my hardware will be a pain. Even more of a pain if I have to spend £700+ to be able to sell M$ cloud options. I don't sell much, just some M365 packages to my clients, but do find the UK source seems to be more reliable than the US monolith.
I've never really used them, but as a contractor telling customers you have access to them without them having to get out the credit card was a good selling point for my business. Emphasis on was, but the reasons for that changing are not to do with Microsoft and are for another thread.
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