Busting the 4 Myths of Microsoft Support with Mary Jo Foley & Mike Jones

Today, we're talking to Mary Jo Foley, Editor-in-Chief at Directions on Microsoft, and Mike Jones, VP at US Cloud, about the top four myths of Microsoft support. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

So the topic for this episode is busting the four myths of Microsoft support. And Mary Jo, I know you wrote an article about this. I read it. It was fantastic, and I was hoping you could cover the first myth with me.

Yeah, so I have heard from our members and customers at Directions on Microsoft a lot of questions about Microsoft support. A lot of times I say to people, what do you want me to write about, or what do you want us to cover in our conversations on our site? Support comes up a lot because people don't really love Microsoft Unified Support. They think it's expensive. They think it's somewhat unreliable, hard to figure out how it works. And they always say to me, could you write about what else we could do besides Microsoft when it comes to support? So the very first thing I felt like was a myth is that customers have to stick with Microsoft when it comes to support. They're like, well, you know, we have really complex contracts. We're using a lot of big Microsoft products. We're a giant Microsoft shop, so I guess we just have to go with Microsoft, right? And the answer is no, you do not. Actually, you have options. And it's amazing how many customers and readers did not know they had a choice. So that was our very first myth: you have a choice. It's not just Microsoft or bust.

Yeah, and for me it was a surprise too. When I learned that, I was taken back. Because I guess it's just in general when you imagine OEM-type products, you don't imagine that third-party support is a thing, right? You imagine, okay, if it's a Microsoft product, they built it. They're going to be able to support it at a level that no one else can.

Exactly.

And then, yeah, but that's not the case.

Right. Yeah, actually I was talking to Mike about this because Directions on Microsoft and US Cloud have a business relationship. And he wrote a great blog post where he said, "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft," like the old "nobody gets fired for buying IBM," right? And I'm like, yeah, that's what a lot of customers think. They think, I'm just going to take the easiest way out, and the easiest way is stay with the vendor that made the products and that I know.

Yeah, Mike and I had a good conversation about that. I thought that was pretty funny too.

Yeah, very convenient that came up.

Mike, anything else to add to the first myth before we move on?

Other than that's why US Cloud's in business right there. I mean, we are that option, right? So I can't agree more with what she says. I mean, getting over the hump is one part of it. It's educating them on the different options, is kind of what we're evangelizing for the past couple years. And it's kind of crazy how little still, I think, there's awareness in the Microsoft ecosystem that customers know that there are alternative options out there. It's surprising to me because I do it all day, every day.

Well, I don't think Microsoft goes out of their way to make it known, right, really?

Yes.

I don't think they're running paid ads to tell people about options.

Although, it's kind of ironic, right? Because Microsoft talks about itself as being very partner-focused, partner-led. So if you really are that, you would think you would recommend to customers, "Hey, we also have these third-party support providers who you would stand behind and recommend," but not so much.

But they do a lot of partners.

They do. They do.

Partner around their world a lot. I don't know what it means, but I see it a lot.

Yeah, I think it's very specific to the support ecosystem. You know, they're very big about driving business for licensing through CSPs. They're very big about driving what they call co-sell opportunities, so projects or implementation services through the partners. The support one's like the one getting dragged by the very long chain at the end of the rope, right? It's just a little trailer, and it's not as commonly talked about.

And so what's myth number two?

The second myth is that Microsoft is the safest option. So in this myth I was talking about, people just assume, okay, the most reliable, the least risky thing I can do is go with Microsoft. I mean, Microsoft product might use Microsoft support. And a lot of times our customers and readers didn't realize that third-party support vendors, good ones like US Cloud, they actually have a lot of Microsoft-certified product engineers on staff. They didn't know that. They're just like, oh yeah, they probably know something about Microsoft products. No, they know a lot about it, right? They had to go out and get certified in these products. So they're not just people who dabble with this. They're very much up to speed on the latest in terms of what's going on there. Another thing that people told me they didn't know was, yeah, but okay, I know I could use a third-party vendor, but what if I have to escalate and have to go to Microsoft? Like, Microsoft's not going to work with me, right? Because I'm working with a third party, so I'm going to be at the end of the queue. Again, not true. Good, reputable third-party support vendors have a direct way to escalate to Microsoft, so you're not in the back of the line. You have very much front-of-the-line status there.

Do you have any good horror stories about Microsoft Unified Support? I don't know if that's outside of the context of what we can do here today, but we can edit it out.

I don't know if I should tell some of them because—

All right, boy.

Yeah. You know, a lot of customers don't want it known that they're complaining because, again, they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to take a chance that something bad could happen if they are complaining about Microsoft support. Like, are they going to ding me on something else—contract, price, whatever?

Was it like a mob situation?

Kind of. It's more of a kind of a monopolizing kind of theory, right? Like, they feel that they can kind of force this agenda to an extent. And, you know, I hate to go super negative, but it is an agenda that they're pushing, and that agenda is at times looked at as bad sales and marketing tactics. Microsoft, again, claims to be very, very partner-centric. You'll hear Satya, you'll hear them all kind of talk about how they're very focused on building their partner ecosystem. It drives so much revenue and business for them to stay relevant in the software side of the house. But you also see tactics that I would consider a little questionable at times to customers, kind of scare—I use the word FUD a lot: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And at times you can instill that by saying, "Hey, you have to buy this. You have to purchase these options, or we'll do this, or we'll not discount this." And it does drive a little bit of fear in your customer's mind because they're ultimately trying to do what's best for the business. But if that comes with a fear of, "Hey, we're going to eliminate these incentives, or we're going to eliminate these discounts on your licensing renewal," yeah, of course it's going to make you stop a little bit. And is this legitimate, or can they really do that?

Yeah, and you know, I think it makes sense. And I'll tell you why I think it makes sense: I don't even use a lot of Microsoft products, but I am a fan of technology leaders. And I like to study technology leaders. I like to watch their interviews and I like to interview them, all of that stuff. And I would say the one takeaway I have from as much as I've watched—I think I've watched every Bill Gates interview that he's done—is ruthless business. So the fact that that's in your founding DNA has no surprise to me that it's carrying on 30-something years later. It's like, it's what I would bet on happening, actually.

Yep.

Yeah. I still respect him for it, by the way. Bill's out there listening. I respect you, but it definitely was your vibe if you go back and watch your past interviews.

They were all about business, and that's why they're as big as they are, and they've been around as long as they have, right?

They all need some dance lessons, though. That's my other takeaway from watching them over time. I want to do an interview with Bill, but the one requirement is he's got to jump over a chair. That's what he's got to do.

Wow, good one. There we go.

I know too much about this. Sorry, guys. All right, let's jump into myth number three: Microsoft does all its own support, making Microsoft's Unified Support the superior choice. Is that true?

No. And Mike and I talked a lot about this. I was assuming they probably outsource some of their support, right? Because Microsoft does have a big services business internally, but it's not their main business. So I was thinking they must outsource some of this. And it turns out they outsource quite a bit of it. They have external vendors. They have contractors. So even if you think you're calling up Microsoft and dealing directly with Microsoft, you might not be, right? And the people you might be talking to may be in another time zone. They may have other data residency things going on with them. You may not get the same person each time you call back. You know, as we all know when we call our insurance companies and our cable companies, there's no continuity and follow-through. So just because you're calling something called Microsoft support, you can't assume you're calling Microsoft.

Okay, that makes complete sense, by the way. I don't think you have to convince anybody of that. Anyone who's ever called Microsoft support would believe it's outsourced.

For help, yeah.

Yeah. Actually, since meeting US Cloud, I have one Microsoft account we use for—we've got some Microsoft emails—and I got locked out of it because the device that got destroyed that had 2FA on it, and I was trying to get into it. I still can't get into it to this day. But I just keep making sure the bill gets paid so that the email stays active.

Wherever that device is, right?

Wherever that device is, it's still working. It's still working. But I tried a couple of times to engage with them, and it was honestly perfect timing right when I started to do some work with US Cloud because, man, I got to the point where I said, okay, we'll just move the domains and restart with a new Microsoft account because this is not getting solved.

Wait a minute, Joel, are you implying a conspiracy?

No, I doubt that would strengthen your case, right?

Right, it would.

Let's wrap it up with myth number four: Enterprise customers are best served by renewing their Enterprise Agreements, called EAs, and support contracts together.

So if you are a big Microsoft customer, you want to have to negotiate as seldom as possible with Microsoft because, again, they play hardball, right? But on the other hand, you also want to have as many opportunities as you can to negotiate with them. So what Microsoft tries to do a lot of times is get you to sign your Enterprise Agreement and your Unified Support contract at the same time in one big mega bundle deal. And at first that sounds great to you as a customer, like, "Oh good, I can just get everything done at once. That's awesome." But in fact, you're limiting the number of times you get to go to bat and try to negotiate with Microsoft if you do those two things together. It's called coterminous contracts when you do it together. And Microsoft loves it, and customers you would think would love it. But again, if you know how Enterprise Agreements work and how Microsoft contract negotiations work, it's better to have more opportunities to talk to them than fewer. So it doesn't actually work in your favor to renew those two things together.

Do you have any—and just for your background, I've never worked for a large enterprise. All of my experience has been building softwares, building up to that 30 to 50 engineers and selling them. So I don't have Enterprise Agreement negotiation experience. Could you share one or two tips, or maybe just your favorite tip when negotiating Enterprise Agreements?

So I also don't directly negotiate them. But I can tell you Directions on Microsoft, where I work, that's a big part of our business is helping customers negotiate their Enterprise Agreements. We have a whole staff of people who do this professionally, and many of them have worked at Microsoft, so they know how to do it. They have tips and tricks, and they have a whole bunch of different strategies of how you can get the best deal when you're negotiating. So we have the expertise. I myself do not, but our staff at Directions has that expertise. And believe it or not, there's known ways. There's known things, do's and don'ts, and things you should never do and things that you always should do. And the biggest tip that we always give people is plan to have a lot of runway time-wise when you're negotiating your contract. Don't just think, "Okay, my contract renews next month, so I'm all set. I have three weeks to get ready." If you have a big contract, it can take you six, nine months to get ready because you have to get all your different teams on the same page. You have to bring people in, make sure you know what your current needs are, what your future projected needs are. There's a whole litany of things you have to get ready. So it's a big thing. It's a full-time job, basically.

And so that's what your company, the company you work for, that's what they—is that their primary line of business?

That's one of our main lines of business. We do Enterprise Agreement negotiation assistance, and we have licensing boot camps where we actually take customers on a whole journey of how to think about Microsoft licensing, and you can do those in person or virtually. We have a whole set of resources about licensing, Microsoft licensing and technology on our website for our members, and we have one-on-one consultations with companies when they need help, when they get stuck on how to negotiate for something or how to fix their contracts. So that's our whole business: helping people save money on their Microsoft contracts.

Oh, nice. So that's why you're friends with US Cloud.

And that's why we're not always friends with Microsoft. Yes, that is why we're friends with US Cloud, because we don't do support. And when people ask us who would you suggest for support, we refer them to US Cloud.

It's a very clean partnership because we're not in competitive aspects of the business. So it's a good partnership.

Yeah, close to the customer, non-competitive is high on the quadrant that you want for partnership.

It is.

Mike, which of these four myths is most common in your day-to-day life, your day-to-day work life?

(Mike Jones at 00:15:48) Hoo. I mean, they're all relevant, obviously, for different reasons. I would say in my normal day to day, the one that's probably the most predominant would be when I jump on sales calls and discussions with potential new clients, and it could be the first interaction. It could be second or third interaction that I'm coming in to introduce myself on the product side. I would say probably myth number three, which I believe was the one that was talking about doing its own support.

(Mike Jones at 00:16:21) And, you know, to go back to Mary Jo's point, 90-ish percent of Microsoft support in Unified is outsourced to a third party. So what customers see is, when they look at third party options and they come in and they talk to us, they're still putting this wall up like, "Well, you're a third party and Microsoft's Microsoft." When in reality, you're already working with outsourced support today in the majority of your interactions with Microsoft Unified. You just don't know it. Or you may know it and not understand what the little V-dash in front of that person's email address actually means, which means vendor. They're not a Microsoft employee. So there's—I won't say it on here because, you know, that's a little lower than my belt line—but there's an actual kind of nickname for V-dash, and something comes after that to kind of rhyme with it. And that's very known in the IT space.

(Mike Jones at 00:17:25) And so customers are aware. A lot of them are, and a lot of them aren't. So it's kind of fifty-fifty, and it's very surprising just restating that kind of statement. Like, you are aware. You're already working with a third party support. Microsoft is subcontracting most of the Unified experience out to these other vendors, like Wipro, Tata, Mindtree, Convergys, Accenture is in there. There's several different vendors that are providing this service on behalf of Microsoft. They're not actual Microsoft employees delivering it. Once you get up to the higher tier, right, tier three, tier four, now you're talking to a badged Microsoft employee. They're actually helping you through your issue. They're very close to the product teams and product groups, so they can resolve your issue. But that's where a lot of the pain points happen. You do know you're already working with a vendor, and there's other implications to that, right? Data sovereignty, data residency. We go back to federal government clients or contractors. They have mandates. I have to work with a US citizen. I have to work with a US national. My data cannot leave the country. And that's part of the problem with Unified as a whole today, unless you start looking at government-only workloads, which, by the way, are really only cloud related, don't really solve the problem for on-prem or hybrid environments for clients. You're kind of stuck. You're working with a non-US based citizen in a lot of these interactions, and that could cause issues for your environment. There may be implications to that from a security standpoint.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:08) US Cloud is US based?

(Mike Jones at 00:19:10) We are 100% US based. You know? Or if you're international, because we do handle international clients, then, you know, like we talked about in the last podcast, it's US Cloud. It's not you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:22) That's right. Yeah. There we go. Mary Jo, can I talk to you for a minute?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:19:28) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:28) I want to talk a little bit about your career.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:19:30) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:30) You've been writing and doing this in the tech and business world for a long time, much longer than me. I've been at it for about ten years now. And I was hoping you could just share your brief story arc of how you got into it and where you're at today.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:19:47) Yes. I have been doing this for forty years as of this year. You're probably not even forty years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:53) I am thirty-seven. That is correct.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:19:54) Yeah. Longer than you've been alive.

(Mike Jones at 00:19:59) She didn't ask me that.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:20:00) I didn't bring Mike into that conversation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:03) That's that. Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:20:05) I started out as a journalist by trade, and I just happened to look into covering technology as my first assignment back in 1984. The very first time I interviewed Bill Gates was 1984. So I started out with a bang, getting to cover a big deal who at that time wasn't as big a deal. And over the years, I just really enjoyed covering technology. I really thought it was fun, and even though I knew nothing about technology, I just was so interested in all the different aspects, the products, how things worked. And I just kind of stuck with it, and I learned on the job by getting to interview all these amazing people. I was working at the time for a publication called PC Week, and they asked me to be their Microsoft reporter. They moved me to Seattle. I'm from Massachusetts originally, and they moved me out to the West Coast. And I lived there for a number of years covering Microsoft in their backyard. And then I came back east. I live in New York now, but still covering Microsoft up to this day. And, yeah, that's how I got into it, got started with it, and I joined Directions on Microsoft almost three years ago because I was ready for the next thing. I wanted to stay covering Microsoft, but I wanted to try doing it from a different angle instead of just always doing the news. And, yeah, here I am.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:25) Who were some of the other people that were around when you started that are still going at it today?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:21:30) The other journalists, you mean?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:32) Yeah. Like in tech. Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:21:33) Not a ton of people have stuck with it. A lot of tech reporters kind of went off and ended up doing PR or working for the vendor itself. Like, some of my colleagues actually went and worked for Microsoft who were covering Microsoft, or went to work for Oracle or other companies. But I just always—people always say to me, "Why did you stay with Microsoft? Didn't you get bored covering Microsoft?" The thing about Microsoft is they are in so many different kinds of businesses and so many markets with so many different products. I never got bored. Right? Because one day, I could be covering something like Windows kernel, and the next day, I'm covering, I don't know, like Xbox. Right? You could cover anything and everything because they're in every market. So I always found it really fascinating and got—and they really gave me access to really the top tier people at Microsoft. Like, I interviewed Gates, Ballmer, and Nadella. I interviewed people like Mark Russinovich and all the whole cast of characters. I've covered operating systems. I've covered applications and services. I covered them when they got into the cloud business. Like, I interviewed the whole team that built Microsoft Azure. So it's been really fun to just stick with one thing and really go deep and get to really know it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:51) And you have a podcast too. Correct?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:22:54) Yes. On Directions on Microsoft, we have our own podcast where I have been interviewing our analysts, who have vast knowledge on all things Microsoft technology and licensing, about all different things that they're working on, their reports, things they're seeing out in the field, what they learn at our licensing boot camps from customers. And it's been really fun just kind of exposing them to the wider audience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:18) All right. Do you still do the show with—I think you had one with TWiT. Do you still do that?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:23:23) Yep. I don't do Windows Weekly anymore.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:25) Okay.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:23:25) I did that for ten years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:26) Ten years. Co-host. Nice.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:23:28) Yep. Yep. It was fun. Very fun. Yeah. It was—I didn't know anything about podcasting when I started, but I did the show with my friend Paul Thurrott, and we had a good rapport on the show. We talked—he was more focused on consumer, and I was more focused on enterprise. So it made a nice mix on the show of covering the whole gamut of what Microsoft does.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:51) I think you're funny. I was reading an interview that you did. And at the end, they said something about, like, your retirement plans and your response, "Am I that old?" And then you said that maybe you'll be baking vegan cupcakes and selling them on the subway. And I was like, who is this person? And, yes, that sounds like an amazing retirement strategy.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:24:11) Yeah. I actually in the middle of my career, I went to cooking school because I was thinking I might get out of covering technology and do something totally different until I found out how much cooking pays, even professionally. And then I was like, "Oh, wait. I thought journalism paid bad, but wait a second. This is a whole other world."

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:28) Yeah. Interviewing eggs pays less. Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:24:32) It does. Way less. Somehow, cutting carrots pays less than writing scoops about Windows. I don't know.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:37) There we go. All right. Other news we've got going on, there's some price increases from Microsoft's on-prem servers that are happening July 1. Do you want to tell me about that?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:24:46) Yeah. Yep. So if you're a Microsoft customer, the good news is Microsoft isn't forcing you to go 100% cloud. If you still want to run your own Exchange server or your own SharePoint server or even your own Skype for Business server in your organization, you can because Microsoft still makes those products. The bad news is if you want to keep doing that, you're going to pay 10% more as of July 1 because they're jacking up the prices on all the on-premises servers. So this is Microsoft strategy in a nutshell. They'll give you the choice, but they'll make it so you pay more for the choice they don't want you to take. They'll let you have an on-premise server. And these new versions that are coming out this year and last year, they're on-premises, but they require a subscription. So are they really on-premises? I don't know. They're half on-premises. Right? They're on-premises with a required subscription so that you can get security updates and product updates. It's not an option, the subscription. It's mandatory. So if you buy something like what's called Exchange Server SE, subscription edition, or Skype for Business Server SE, you're going to have to buy a subscription as part of the package. And as a result, you're paying 10% more. You're also paying more for the client licenses that are required to connect to the server. So, yeah, you can do it, but you have to ask yourself, do I want to pay more and keep it on-prem, or do I want to finally make the leap to the cloud if I can and pay less?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:28) Yeah. They're making, like, on-prem kind of like colo.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:26:32) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:32) Right. You get to house the equipment. Don't worry. You're housing the servers it's running on. But, yeah.

(Mike Jones at 00:26:38) We own the software. Right? Yeah. It's our—you're licensing.

(Mike Jones at 00:26:42) Yeah. That's it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:43) That's right. Yeah. The days of owning software licenses are almost extinct.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:26:48) They are.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:49) Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:26:49) Yeah. You don't ever really own it. Right? In a way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:52) You used to—you used to go to Staples, walk down the aisle, buy a box.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:26:55) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:56) Put the floppies in, load it up. You're good to go. You know? Not anymore, though.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:27:02) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:02) I got to be honest, though. I'm not necessarily complaining. Like, life with software today, I can hit a button, my Tesla updates, like, in the middle of the night. Like, I really like the advancements of the technologies today. I mean, it makes our lives so much easier.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:27:18) I know. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people are like, "Do you really want to run your own Exchange server? Do you really?" And for some customers, that's not a "want to" option. It's like they have to because of regulations or requirements. And then there were this whole other set of people who are repatriating workloads from the cloud because they're like, "I can do it better. I can do it cheaper." They can't really. Almost no one can. Very few companies can, but some think they can anyway.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:46) It's always that—that's the famous, you know, technology engineering leader, build it, buy it, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a problem that'll exist forever. Even when all the Agentic agents are running around doing half the work, like, that'll still be a thing. They'll be having to deal with that problem. The AI agents will have—

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:28:06) We won't have to—

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:06) We'll abstract that out. Nice.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:28:10) That'll be great. That day, I hope I'm still around in the industry to see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:14) You'll be selling cupcakes on the subway.

(Mike Jones at 00:28:16) I might be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:19) Oh, man. All right. Let's talk about this $80 billion Microsoft's putting into AI. I don't know anything about that. You want to enlighten me?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:28:27) So the $80 billion that they're spending in their fiscal 2025, which ends June 30, is for AI data centers and also for non-AI workloads in their data centers. So it's their whole building out the data centers to support AI and other workloads. Now there have been reports lately saying that maybe they're going to cut back on that. Like, there's been signs that some of the contracts they signed aren't going to be fulfilled, that they're not going to actually build it out, or they're going to slow their build of it. But they have insisted that for fiscal 2025, they are going to spend that $80 billion on the infrastructure. And they need it for OpenAI because OpenAI runs on Azure for one. They need it for other customers who are building out their own AI workloads, and they need it for all these other non-AI workloads that are still in Azure. So, yeah, they're doing it. They're spending that money. And next year, they say the spending might gradually slow a bit as things—as kind of LLMs become more efficient and the way we work with AI becomes more efficient. But for now, they needed to build it out and they're building it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:40) Are they—Mike, are they doing anything with support with LLMs? Like, is Microsoft—is that on your threat—I like to talk about threat vectors too. Is that, like, on your threat radar of them making an AI agent that's so good at supporting that they essentially cannibalize their own business and also destroy your line of business?

(Mike Jones at 00:29:58) I think it impacts not just Microsoft themselves. It impacts the entire IT industry to an extent. Right? So that theory, if it holds weight, right—and, again, no one has a crystal ball, so we don't know exactly how it's going to end up. We just have theories based on where we're at. I think it will impact. It's going to—partners are already having to shift because of that investment. You see where Microsoft's going. So partners of Microsoft, it's adapt or die. So either you get on this bus or you get on the next one or you find your own path forward. And with AI, you know, it's forcing partners to jump. The earlier they adapt and jump on that train, the more profitability and potential premiums they can charge customers because they were the trailblazers in that space and develop products specifically around AI. So there is an advantage to partners that believe in this AI initiative and get behind it as an early adopter. It does require partners to kind of reinvent themselves in a way. Right? Now you've got to reskill, retool, and come out with new product offerings. So instead of traditional services like project services, support services, now they're all AI-driven products and services that you have to deliver. So instead of hiring the smart guy to come in and implement a solution, now you're bringing in someone to sell an AI-driven product that's going to do it for you. So it's just a different way of thinking. It's a different vantage point that partners need to slide into in order to stay relevant in that AI space.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:47) Are there any plans on your side to build the agentic support agent that's so good that you could ultimately turn around and sell the entire business to Microsoft? You're like, this problem is now solved. Support is now solved.

(Mike Jones at 00:32:01) What I will say is US Cloud specifically is very heavily invested in AI. We are very invested in how it can be productized to bring benefit to our portfolio, but ultimately our customers. So, yes, we are very focused on that. I can speak on one thing we are doing, which we're really excited about, and not many have done it yet just because of how our business model was where we've just been in the Microsoft support game. Right? No hardware, no licensing. We're just very focused on that part of the business. We've built a pretty big depth of knowledge and knowledge base articles on support around Microsoft. So we've actually started to integrate a tool which we have today that is an AI-driven knowledge lake. It is a knowledge base built with AI back end and LLMs to help support our customers and help our engineers get to a solution faster.

(Mike Jones at 00:33:03) So I think Microsoft is doing those things as well. I would like to think they are, in a little bit of a different capacity because, again, support's not really their main focus. I think the tool sets and the programs that are developed out of the other lines of revenue generation for Microsoft will natively kind of fall into the support space and take over for support, but not yet. So, yeah, we're doing it.

(Mike Jones at 00:33:31) I see it. I think if you can get the capital investment to go out and get that agent, that is end all be all, but let's expand it a little further. Let's make it OEM or product agnostic, where it can do Cisco. It could do VMware. It could do Microsoft. Right? It's product agnostic winner. Yeah. I mean, just ring the bell because you just hit a home run.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:59) Mary Jo, you've been around in doing this for forty years. Can you share maybe one, maybe two of the big stories that you've broken over the past couple decades?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:34:10) There's good ones and bad ones. Right? There's ones where it was really fun at the time, and later, I was kind of like, oh, boy. This is gonna be a problem.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:21) Those are the best ones. Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:34:22) Yeah. I'm thinking about that one. This is kind of midway through my career. I got a memo right after Microsoft finished building Windows 2000 that was meant to be an internal memo just for Microsoft staff, and it was meant to kind of rev them up and keep them going even though they had just finished the product. Right? And so the head of Windows at the time, Jim Alchin, he said, you know, okay. We just finished this. But there's still like 63,000 bugs left in this product. So don't stop working, guys. We gotta keep going. So I got my hands on this memo from a friend, and I wrote about it. But I did put it in context. I explained, this was meant to be motivational. This wasn't meaning like the product was terrible or super buggy. And then I had to get on a plane and go to a Microsoft conference. So I remember stepping off the plane, and I'm walking through the terminal. And I looked up at the TV screen, and the headline on CNN said 63,000 bugs left in Windows. And I'm like, uh-oh. I'm gonna be in huge trouble. And so then I went to the conference and everybody was really mad at me from Microsoft and got some choice emails and choice words and banned from a couple sessions. And, yeah, it didn't go well.

(Mike Jones at 00:35:42) Ah, they put you in time out.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:35:44) They put me in time out. I've been in time out a few times with Microsoft.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:49) That's where you make the best friends in time out. Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:35:52) You know, as a reporter, you're doing your job. I just said to people, I'm just doing my job, and they're like, yeah. But come on. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:00) Yeah. Well, the whole media cycle. They have definitely the reputation has changed over forty years of media as a whole. The journalistic integrity, it's like they're the 20%, and the 80% is the hype cycle headline people.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:36:18) It's true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:19) Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:36:19) Right. Right. Clickbait. In those days, we didn't really have clickbait, but that was the equivalent, basically, of clickbait. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:26) Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So what was another story that you broke that was huge?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:36:32) Oh, okay. This is a funny one too. I didn't get in as much trouble on this one, but I was interviewing Mark Russinovich. So if you know Mark Russinovich, he's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about Windows. And I was—he had just moved to the Azure team, and he was helping to run the whole Azure team. I was at a conference, and I said to him—we were having a sit down meeting, and I said to him, so what's gonna be the next thing you're gonna do with Azure? What's gonna be Azure 2.0? And I didn't think he would really answer me. Right? And so I'm sitting there, me, a public relations person, and him, and he goes, oh, you wanna know what we're doing next? I'm like, yeah. And he goes, do you have a piece of paper? I'm like, yep. So I ripped a piece of paper out of my notebook. I gave it to him. He took my pen, and he started drawing the diagram of what they were gonna do with Azure 2.0 on this piece of paper and explaining each step to me. And I was watching the PR person, and he was kicking him under the table like, Mark, no. No. No. What are you doing? And so at the end, I picked up the piece of paper, and the PR person picked up the piece of paper. We both ripped the paper away and ripped it in half. Right? And I said to him, give me that. That's my diagram. And Mark's like, give her the diagram. And he said, no. We're gonna announce this next month, and you just gave her the whole story. And he said, well, she asked. Give her the piece of paper. And so I get to write—

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:52) I like my scoop about—yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:37:53) Yeah. I get to write a whole scoop about what they were doing. They tried to negotiate with me to not do it, offered me all these things. But I'm like, no. I'm doing this. Like, let's go.

(Intro Narrator at 00:38:03) Yeah. So—

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:38:04) Yeah. After that, I was banned from bringing pen and paper into my interview with Mark. Go figure. But yeah. You know what? Those kind of little fun things, that's what keeps you going as a reporter. Right? Little fun scoops you get to make or things you learn, ways it just happens or falls into your lap. It's like, yeah. That's awesome. I get to explain this to the world. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:26) I have to ask. I know you probably get this a lot, Mary Jo, but I have to ask. There was a moment you told Steve Jobs to leave an interview. You gotta share that with me.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:38:36) Yes. I did. In my defense, I didn't know who he was.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:43) What's the story?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:38:44) So I was interviewing Bill Gates in 1984. It was the very first time I interviewed him. We were at Comdex. Mike probably remembers Comdex back in the day, the little show.

(Mike Jones at 00:38:52) I do.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:38:53) We were in Las Vegas, and I was just sitting in the Microsoft booth, me and Bill Gates, unfolding chairs with the PR person there. Right? So everybody would see Bill Gates, and people already were starting to know who he was. And they were like, hey, Bill. And I'm trying to interview him on the show floor. Right? And then all of a sudden, this guy walks up, and Bill stands up, and they start talking. And I had like thirty minutes to do this interview. And I'm looking at my watch, and I'm like, who is this guy? And he's taking over my time for my interview, and they just keep talking and talking. So finally, I just tapped him, and I said, hi. I don't know who you are, but I'm doing an interview with him right now. Could you come back later? And he said, yeah. Okay. And he walked off. And Bill said to me, okay. I bet you don't even know who that was. And I said, I do not. And he said, it's Steve Jobs. And I'm like, mm-hmm. And he goes, do you know who Steve Jobs is? I said, nope. He's like, okay.

(Mike Jones at 00:39:48) Was that part of your first interview? Because you said—

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:39:50) It was. It was part of it.

(Mike Jones at 00:39:52) That was part of the first one.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:39:53) My very first interview with Bill Gates. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:56) Oh my goodness. How many interviews have you done over your career with Bill?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:40:00) I haven't done any recently. I'd interviewed him quite a bit at the beginning because Microsoft was really hungry for press, and they were small. And we were covering them at the publication I was working at. So I probably interviewed him maybe like 10 times, maybe more. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:16) What's your takeaway of his personality? And we can cut it out if you want. I just am curious.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:40:23) He is a very difficult person. And I didn't care for him, and he didn't care for me, and that was okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:31) Okay. Yeah. Well, hey. At least it's out there. So—

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:40:34) Yeah. Yeah. I interviewed Ballmer too. I love Ballmer. Steve Ballmer was my favorite interview of the three CEOs.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:42) Really?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:40:43) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:44) Why?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:40:45) Because you never knew what the guy was gonna say, but he always said something that was worth a story.

(Mike Jones at 00:40:51) True. Yeah. Look.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:53) My introduction to Steve Ballmer was—I've never met him. Watching a video of him, and he was just going ape in the speech, just yelling. And I was like, who is this guy, and why is he in technology? Because this is not normally what you see. And I loved it. Yeah.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:41:12) Yeah. I don't know if you've seen videos of him since he took over the Clippers, but the sports reporters didn't know who he was. And then you'd see them start talking. They're like, who the heck is this guy? He's a maniac. Right? I was thinking, oh, the tech journalists should tell them, like, hey. By the way, you're in for a treat here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:33) Oh, did you get to do an interview with Jobs?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:41:36) With Steve Jobs? Yeah. Yes. One. When he was running—I can't remember the name of the company now. It was a joint venture they have with IBM.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:46) Like, NeXT or something?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:41:48) No. It was some small company. It'd be on the letter C, I think. I can't remember the name of it right now. But they were looking for publicity, so we interviewed Steve Jobs and his colleague from IBM who were working together on it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:01) Oh, okay. Cool.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:42:02) Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:03) Because that—he had a departure from Apple for a little bit.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:42:07) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. But I didn't cover Apple at all. We had other people doing that, so I never really interviewed him.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:13) Okay.

(Mike Jones at 00:42:13) Was that like your icebreaker, by the way? Remember when I kicked you out of your conversation with the Bill?

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:42:18) I didn't bring that up. No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:20) That's right. You wanna blend into the background with that one.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:42:23) Yeah. You know? Pretty much. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:26) Oh, that's good. That's good. Well, this is great. Mike, anything else that we need to add as we start to wrap up? Uscloud.com is the website?

(Mike Jones at 00:42:35) Yep. Theuscloud.com is our website. We have a newly modified website. We kind of updated our website recently. It's great stuff. You know, link, there's a little click box in the top right, you know, to get more info and people can reach out and kind of spread the good word. You know? Also, we got a partner in Directions on Microsoft that we partner with. So great experts. Probably, I will give my one unasked thing to DOM, and that is that they are probably the best Microsoft road map experts that exist. So they do it, but they do it better than Microsoft does their own road map. So if customers out there really looking at more strategic thinking and down the road, what's happening in the Microsoft landscape, DOM Directions on Microsoft is your place to go, for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:31) And they've got a great team over there too for writers. What are—what is your technical position? I was trying to give you a compliment, Mary Jo. What's your technical title? I realized I didn't know your title as I said it.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:43:43) I'm the editor in chief.

(Mike Jones at 00:43:44) You're the—

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:44) editor in chief. Okay. They've got a great editor in chief over at DOM.

(Mary Jo Foley at 00:43:47) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:50) That's how nerdy I am. When you said DOM, I was like, why is he talking about document object modeling? Oh. Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.