Paul Freeman, president of Coast Solutions Group, a distributor of technology services based in Irvine, Calif., agreed that customers will likely forgive one or two missing features as long as they get at least one upgrade during their Software Assurance contract period.
"Microsoft has established a sales model based around new products and new technologies being introduced in order to stimulate Software Assurance and upgrade sales," said Freeman. "My sense from customers is that if the changes are significant enough, then they're going to migrate, even if there are pieces that are missing."
Samm DiStasio, group product manager for Microsoft's Windows Server group, acknowledged that the company has struggled to come up with the right formula for promising, and then delivering, new features to customers on a more incremental basis, rather than waiting for upgrades to show up every three to four years.
In the past 18 months, for example, the company released several Windows server add-ons, including Windows SharePoint Services and Digital Right Management Services as well as several server feature packs such as Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM).
Several customers said they liked having new features and functionality delivered to them incrementally, but they complained that deploying too many add-ons and feature packs in a short time was time-consuming and costly. To address that, Microsoft decided on midcycle releases, such as R2.
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