As you may know, Microsoft recently announced that their popular TechNet subscription service is coming to an end this year. There has been a lot of debate about why this service is going away with one side saying that there was too much abuse and the other saying that the service is necessary for IT pros to continue their training efforts. Others say that the software was never intended to be used for lab purposes, although Microsoft itself has said differently over the years.
Personally, I believe that Microsoft is making a strategic error in this discontinuation of this service. At the very least, I urge the company to reconsider the price of existing MSDN subscriptions since the closest comparable MSDN subscription is 10x the cost of TechNet. Although many have been trying to get Microsoft to reconsider their elimination of TechNet, it seems that those efforts have fallen on deaf ears.
On the other hand, while I was at VMworld 2013, there were rumors regarding the resurrection of VMware’s VMTN subscription service, which was much like TechNet and which VMware discontinued a few years ago. While this is just a rumor, it would be a welcome one as it would mean that administrators could avoid having to constantly rebuild test labs as software expires.
What’s your take on these two items?