And Microsoft offers the same support for a similar fee — the big change here is that the support is offered directly to the customer rather than through a reseller. Further design / build support can be acquired through the big consultancies as consulting engagements.
The big shift here is the customer now pays Microsoft directly rather than the reseller. They now own the customer relationship, which is everything in software sales.
As an enterprise customer of all three major cloud providers at an 8-digit spend, I can tell you without flinching that AWS offers (at least) 10x the support that its competitors do and that was also true when the spend was 5 digits.
I mean, they basically invented the entire cloud platform model; so it stands to reason they’re way out in front. Microsoft is making headway, but a high-touch support model is so far outside Google’s DNA I don’t think they’re ever going to get it right.
The big shift here is the customer now pays Microsoft directly rather than the reseller. They now own the customer relationship, which is everything in software sales.