Microsoft Financing Looks to Help Cash-Strapped IT Departments

With the global economy still in the doldrums, beleaguered ITprofessionals and IT managers are struggling to do more with less. Partof their strategy for staying afloat revolves around sticking withlegacy software that is still getting the job done, like the legion ofIT departments that are opting to stay with Windows XPrather than upgrade to Windows 7. Computer hardware is also cheaper andmore powerful than ever, a situation that leads many businesses tosolider on with older equipment that is still getting thejob done.

Yet not every IT department can afford to stay with legacyhardware and software systems, and sometimes -- for the sake ofensuring critical business tasks or functions – new investments must bemade in IT resources. Recognizing that businesses may need help infinancing new software and hardware purchases, Microsoft has ramped up promotion of their MicrosoftFinancing arm that provides a number of financial servicesfor Microsoft customers. To get the latest on what Microsoft Financingcan offer customers, I recently spoke with Seth Eisner, general managerof Microsoft Financing. 

 Eisnermentioned that Microsoft Financing generally helps customers with threedifferent financial scenarios. "We can help customers map theirpayments to deployments, or help them align financing around theirbudget cycles," Eisner said. "We also help customers with periodicpayments that work [more effectively] with their cash flowsituation...our financing options allow us to help customers buy more,buy better, buy bigger, and buy more often."

In a statement included in a news release as part of therenewed publicity push for Microsoft Financing, Microsoft partnerSteria -- a provider of IT business services in Europe -- said thatMicrosoft Financing has helped them streamline their IT operations."We’ve known about financing but not for software," says PhillipCournot, purchasing officer at Steria. "We’ve used other sources toprocure our hardware, so when we learned about the Microsoft financingcapabilities we were sold on the convenience. This is by far the bestand most flexible financing solution we’ve used for purchasing oursoftware and services."

According to Cournot, Microsoft Financing helped Steria updatetheir enterprise licensing agreement to allow for more flexiblepayments stretched over a three year period, a change that more closelymatched the actual deployment of their software. "My core IT challengeis to deploy Microsoft Office and Windows across our enterprise andreduce IT costs," says Christian Revelli, Group Chief InformationOfficer at Steria. "Microsoft Financing helped me in this task bysplitting the cost of the rollout over three years."

We'd love to hear from Windows IT Proreaders that have used Microsoft Financing in the past, or plan to doso in the future. So please add a comment to this blog post or start upa conversation on Twitter about it.