Pay To Play -- Redmondmag.com

Barney's Blog

Pay To Play

I read the headline "Microsoft Gave Customer $250,000 To Choose Office 365 over Google Apps" and assumed something sinister happened. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. In fact, I'm not sure it was bad at all.

Here's what happened: Google and Microsoft were fighting for a deal with the University of Nebraska which wanted to move its productivity apps in the cloud.

Microsoft sealed the deal with a quarter million dollar bonus (kick back, pay off, rebate, whatever you want to call it). I call it a spiff because it's going to consultants to help make the transition as smooth as possible.

What is best spiff you've ever gotten from a vendor? And remember, when I publish letters I only use first names so you can really come clean at [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/11/2011 at 1:18 PM

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