The Reddit recap highlights last week’s top trending posts on the r/msp subreddit. This is the largest MSP-related group on Reddit with more than 40,000 members. Looking to find a quick answer to a question? This is the place to be.
Many Microsoft partners are furious that the Microsoft Partner Network is removing internal use rights and technical support for partners. Microsoft quietly dropped the announcements on its partner website last week, but partners quickly found out about the changes and took to Reddit to voice their concerns.
The post on Microsoft’s site doesn’t provide any reasons for slashing partners’ internal use rights. All it says is that product license use rights “will be updated to be used for business development scenarios such as demonstration purposes, solution/services development purposes, and internal training.” Microsoft is also cutting back on the on-premises product support incident benefits that its partners got as part of the Microsoft Action Pack and competencies.
This Reddit post in particular, which includes a link to a petition that (as of this article going live) has 783 signatures, suggests the changes represent Microsoft’s “war” on partners. Others described the changes as Microsoft’s way of setting the bar higher for its new partners. “This is simply telling us that if you can’t bother to bring us at least this you’re too small to work with us and we don’t want to work with you,” one user wrote.
Former International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) president Kelvin Kirby called the partner network changes as “the worst move by Microsoft in 30 years” on his Facebook page.
“Will be interesting to see how Microsoft survives Inspire after this rather critical announcement,” he wrote.
Please don’t judge an MSP on what their ex-client says from r/msp
A Reddit user working for an MSP shares a tale of a new client complaining about the previous MSP.
“Now that instantly raised a red flag to me, there is no MSP that I know of who would want to keep servers unpatched and problems pending in their ticketing system,” the user behind the post wrote.
So they called the old MSP and it turned out things weren’t entirely as they had seemed.
“This client has refused to go for any upgrades or proposals the MSP has suggested,” the post wrote. “So I went back to the client, sent over a list of changes that would need to be made if I were to support the system… they said no.”
Just goes to show that a quick conversation with a client’s former MSP can be worth the call.
I got that dreaded 1am call that a client’s HQ is on fire. from r/msp
It’s 1 a.m. and a client calls in to say their office building is on fire – what do you do? That was the question posed by this Reddit post, which also pointed to a real-life example that was unfolding late last week with one of their clients.
“Wish me luck. I planned for this scenario, time for it to all pay off. The adrenaline will hopefully keep me going the next day,” the user behind the post wrote.
The user updated the post shortly after, noting the fire department saved some servers which fired back up without incident. Other equipment has been replaced, while virtual machines were replicated to new hardware.
The story spurred some interesting conversations about how to be prepared for these late-night emergencies, as well as some comments about how much an MSPs actions in these moments mean to the client.
“Be there for the customer even if you have to go the extra mile(s). This is something the customer will remember for a long time from now,” one comment said.
