Getting customers to request Office 2007

Thu 19 Jul 2007, 07:01 AM

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by Ben Langhinrichs
Martin Leyrer sent me this link to How to gain market share today from KLUGE.DE.  It is an illuminating demonstration of how giving away software can make money for Microsoft...

Customer: So can you also help us with infrastructure and hardware problems?
Me: Yes, of course!
Customer: We need help upgrading to Vista and Office 2007.
Me: Ooops...
Customer: Is there a problem?
Me: Well, you have now Windows XP and Office 2003 - and to be honest thats everything you need. In fact I would recommend taking a look at Open Office 2.2. So why do you want to upgrade?
Customer: Very simple: We want to read and edit Office 2007 DOCX files.
Me: But why? Nobody in the world uses that format except Microsoft itself?
Customer: We receive every day documents in that format from the European Commission in Brussels, we are part of many groups in Brussels, and they send out their stuff as DOCX.
Me: So tell them to convert it to DOC or even Open Document Format. There are probably hundreds of other interest group outside in Europe that receive these files and cant open it - and don't want to spent thousands of Euros to upgrade the systems.
Customer: No way. Everybody in Brussels uses now Office 2007, and they will not stop sending the documents out in DOCX. We tried and failed.
Me: But what is the reason for this bullshit?
Customer: Microsoft gave away Office 2007 licenses to the Commission's administrative staff - for free.

How many other companies receive documents from the European Commission and decide to get Office 2007?  Those "free" licenses are certainly paying off for Microsoft, although you would think the European Commission would be savvy enough to not play along.

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