Bekker's Blog

Blog archive

Microsoft Financing Makes Pitch to CIOs

Microsoft Financing has some new blood at the top. According to a Microsoft PR-produced feature story posted today, the general manager of Microsoft Financing is now Seth Eisner. Longtime former GM Brian Madison joined Key Equipment Finance as senior vice president of U.S. vendor alliances in November. Eisner's LinkedIn profile puts him in his current job since August. Prior to taking over Microsoft Financing he was GM of investments and acquisitions for Microsoft.

The feature story indicates a slight pivot for Microsoft Financing under Eisner. Madison pushed the program heavily through partners, with a focus on smaller and midsize businesses. (Microsoft Financing allows customers to finance IT purchases, including hardware, software and services, through Microsoft. The benefit to partners was cash flow -- they got a check upfront for everything from Microsoft, and the customer made monthly payments to Microsoft. The benefit to Microsoft was generally increased deal sizes enabled by the financing.)

Eisner is making his pitch directly to CIOs, indicating that Microsoft Financing may be focusing more on expanding its foothold among enterprise customers. This would be a smart move since customers across the spectrum are looking more often to buy IT out of operational budgets rather than as capital expenses. Microsoft Financing is one way to bridge that gap -- allowing a customer to invest in the big, on-premise project but pay for it monthly as if it were a service.

We hope this simply means that an enterprise push is being added to the portfolio, not that partners and SMB purchasers are being de-emphasized. Microsoft Financing has been a good, if underutilized, deal for partners in the past. We hope Eisner will continue to keep partners front and center.

Posted by Scott Bekker on February 01, 2011


Featured

  • Microsoft Starts Countdown to Dynamics GP End-of-Support

    Dynamics GP, Microsoft's venerable enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for midsized businesses, is set to lose support in four years.

  • Image of a futuristic maze

    The 2024 Microsoft Product Roadmap

    Everything Microsoft partners and IT pros need to know about major Microsoft product milestones this year.

  • Windows Recall Preview Starts Rolling Out with Windows 11 24H2

    Microsoft on Tuesday began rolling out Windows 11 version 24H2, describing the update as a "full OS swap that contains new foundational elements required to deliver transformational Al experiences and exceptional performance."

  • An image of planes flying around a globe

    2024 Microsoft Conference Calendar: For Partners, IT Pros and Developers

    Here's your guide to all the IT training sessions, partner meet-ups and annual Microsoft conferences you won't want to miss.