An Open Letter to Microsoft

Stop! Please stop!  Put the keyboard down and step away from the desk.

Your development tools are great.  They’re easy to pick up, easy to work with and we have built some very cool applications and sites with them.  No complaints there.  However…

We have been Certified Partners with you for over 3 years, and in that time you have foisted no less than three different account management Web site versions upon us.  We don’t make many changes to our account, so I don’t go into the Partner web site very often. But I can tell you that when I do, I’m not interested in a treasure hunt.  Throw me a bone here.  Can you keep the same site up for maybe 2 years in a row? 

This year’s change was the worst, as it occurred during our renewal period  - and your site was down for days, to add insult to injury.  Now I’ve got to go in and figure out how to find things all over again. It shouldn’t be this hard.

While I appreciate the push that Microsoft has made in the past few years to really refine the user experience for their operating systems and productivity products, I’d like to see the same focus made for their partners.

The user experience as an aspiring partner is one of hard work and lots of research. The payoff is the partnership. A company’s experience after earning partnership shouldn’t be as difficult.

Thanks to Vince for contributing to this post.

Listening to:  Portastatic / Bright Ideas