Perhaps most disturbing about that last one is the fact that the speaker stated the only reason they decided to do that session as a general session was because Microsoft was giving away free copies to all attendees, so they figured they should have at least one session on how to use the software. Like that's going to happen during a 90-minute session before 400 people. At one of the earlier breakout sessions, the speaker(different speaker, same firm) talked about how this firm (the one doing the conference) did not accept advertising or anything from the many companies and software/hardware vendors they review. Thus, in his mind they are able to maintain a mostly "objective" and "neutral" position. Except they gladly accept free software from all these companies for "review" purposes (about $750,000 worth this past year by his admission). And starting this year, they had companies wanting to provide free copies of software to attendees. But they can still maintain their objectivity. That's why I had to suffer through a general session on Microsoft Small Business Accounting software instead of something more useful like implementing VoIP, or going paperless, or one of the other breakout sessions I couldn't attend that dealt with product agnostic topics.

To their credit, in the technology update, which was the opening general session, they did mention SuSE and Red Hat Linux as server solutions for accounting firms. They also stated pretty clearly that all the advertisements about Microsoft having a lower TCO than Windows were a bunch of BS. So I have to give them "props" for that. Of course, they then went back to talking about how you should be moving to the Windows XP line if you are not there already and preparing for Vista. I also found it quite sad that they were recommending people use IE - right after going over all the problems with viruses, worms, and patch management issues. Nevertheless, last year they didn't even mention Linux, so I guess my comments on the evaluation sheet last year may have paid off.

Their continual harping about XP did get me to thinking about something. There were occasions when everyone would get a chuckle about some firm or company that was still running Win95 or Win98, if for no other reason than it is so old. If I recall correctly, XP came out in 2001, so it is about to become a five year old operating system. In "technology time", is there really any difference between a five year old OS and an eight year old OS? Since Microsoft is now on this five year cycle of ending full support for their products, I wonder if they'll manage to get Vista out before XP moves into "extended" support? I'm thinking there may be some marketing opportunities available to help convince users to switch to a modern operating system instead of something five years old.

I will disclose that Microsoft was not the only company giving away free software. Intuit was also giving away the "Accountants Edition" of their Quickbooks product. As an interesting aside to that, I did learn that Quickbooks has switched to the Sybase db engine. The thing is, they disabled the Sybase ODBC connectivity in an apparent effort to prevent companies using their product from accessing their own data via any other means than Quickbooks. Yes, there are folks out there that will sell you the ODBC connector that will let you get around that. I was just amazed at the mindset of a company that would actively and intentionally cut off your access to your own data (well, at least try to).

Back to Microsoft. According to one of the speakers, last month they were in Washington (the state) doing the same conference for Washington's association of CPA's. That was held on the Redmond campus instead of the usual location of a hotel or conference center. Supposedly, one of the Microsoft folks that was present told this speaker that as of the start of November, Microsoft had delivered over 100,000 copies of Small Business Accounting, virtually all of them FREE. I'm not sure whether Microsoft developed SBA from scratch or bought some company to build it on, but it seems to me there must be a significant monetary investment by Microsoft in the product. And here they are giving it away for FREE. I wonder how other developers trying to build small business accounting applications feel about Microsoft coming into the market and giving their package away for FREE? Do you think that helps the small developer? And just for reference, Microsoft sells the product at a price point that is below the market price for Peachtree or Quickbooks (about $150 versus a range of $180 to $250). I wonder if they are taking a loss on that just to be able to have the cheapest product on the store shelf?

Of course, besides engaging in activity that seems to me to be obviously designed to drive out competition from Intuit or Peachtree, Microsoft has another motive. According to the accounts that were shared, the Microsoft rep indicated they hope that by getting small businesses started on the SBA package, as they grow they'll just move up the vertical chain to a mid-tier product offered by Microsoft, like Navision or Great Plains (they have several of the mid-market packages now).

The final part of the strategy is to target accountants to give the software to. That is because Microsoft thinks accountants will sway the opinions of their clients and convince them to buy SBA instead of one of the competing packages. I personally find that very troubling and not a good reflection on the profession.

Wow! Potentially $40k worth of software licenses for the measly sum of only $299 per year. The speaker at the conference described the situation a few years ago (before I was a CPA) when clients started bringing Quickbooks files into CPA firms to get their accountants to do their books. The CPA's were not happy about it, but eventually succumbed from this pressure by their clients (users?) to implement the same software. They think Microsoft may be employing the same strategy with SBA 2006. Of course, with the great deals shown above, maybe Microsoft is hoping the accountants will just start implementing MS solutions at their client sites. So they are squeezing things from both ends?

Another bit of innovation was quite humorous. I'm not a Quickbooks user, so I would not have picked up on this had it not been pointed out. In Quickbooks, instead of calling departments "departments", they are called "classes". Guess what they are called in SBA 2006?

Thanks for reading,

Jeff