Thank you Trevor, Great Article.
Killing TechNet will NOT stop piracy. I've seen MSDN ISOs and keys online for as long as I can remember. What will happen next? raise the price on MSDN subs? I've got news for you Microsoft, you're more likely to price MSDN out of reach for the common towns folk before you ever put a dent what pirates can download. At the end of the day pirates will obtain your goods and they'll use stolen credit cards if they must.
TechNet is your best friend for exposing new hearts and minds to your products. TechNet is responsible for creating future crops of Microsoft Diehards. This can't be done with 90 day evals or limited rearms. True fans are created through trust, slow growth/nurturing, bonding with the consumer and honor. A kin to producing a diamond over millions of years of faithful TechNet subscription.
These Diehards go on to become your next wave of corporate insiders. Your direct contacts to the beating hearts of IT Server Rooms and Server Closets the world over. These are your IT foot soldiers who might as well be branded with Microsoft tattoos. We push for your products and massage yearly budgets in order to make your software possible. I'm still committed being gainfully employed and our company may well spring for an MSDN sub but it's the younger generation of IT foot soldier I worry about. The ones who have yet to pick up a keyboard. Loosing them won't loose them to the IT Industry. They'll still grow-up same as the rest of us but they'll grow allegiant to Google, Apple, Amazon, FireFox or Linux. Microsoft's loss is their competitors gain.
Loosing TechNet weakens Microsoft's chances on the difficult road ahead. I'm with Trevor on this. It's hard to watch the decline and foolish decisions of such an important company (in our lives).