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Microsoft to extend D-day for incentive reforms, say partners

Channel: October launch date binned, January 'more likely'

The word on the street is that a backlash from Microsoft's top tier enterprise partners has forced its incentive architects to revisit pending compensation reforms a month before they are due to be implemented.

As revealed by El Chan in mid-summer, Redmond has again decided, not long after the last restructure in autumn 2011, to carve up the back-end sales margin that it pays Licensing Solutions Partners [LSPs].

The plan had been to introduce the change on 1 October, though that deadline is looming and looking less realistic.

"Microsoft has gone back to the drawing board, the end result could be the same but it will certainly ease the transition," said one well placed LSP.

Partners spent July remodelling the potential impacts of the incentive restructure, which appears to heavily favour partners flogging Microsoft's cloudy wares including Office 365.

The vendor previously admitted the financial outcome for LSPs was dependent on where their existing focus lies - renewals, licensing, cloud or hosting.

Partners voiced frustration at having to again rework the focus of their organisation to make the most of the compensation overhaul.

"Microsoft hasn't given people enough time to adapt [to the changes] and that is what it will do," said one.

An October launch is now "unlikely" sources concurred, "it's not as clear cut as Microsoft originally made out, my gut feel is that a realistic timeframe for implementation, given they haven't finalised everything, is January", said one LSP.

Allen Boone, general manager for partner incentives at Microsoft left in July to start up a business called Nexcentus, and this was linked to the latest botched compensation restructure, our channel peeps claimed.

Microsoft refused to comment on Boone and UK PR were trying to "still checking" to ascertain what comments it can make regarding the incentive changes. ®

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