At work we've moved from several AAA-class products and services to Microsoft ones. The Microsoft ones were cheaper and more integrated but always less capable, like a minimum viable product design. It's just good enough to not pay for a separate third party product but just put up with the included product in the bundle.
And the deeper you get in the ecosystem the harder it is to ever get out. And of course the more you get dependent on them the more leverage they have in the next contract negotiation.
I don't consider them a trusted partner either because they often overpromise, downplay design limitations to our leadership.
Balmer also killed the Courier tablet OS. Insisting that everything windows held everyone hostage to bad implementations of new versions of Windows. Which brings to mind Stephen Elop killing everything that wasn't Windows Phone at Nokia. Who can criticize if there are no alternatives?
`archive.ph` doesn't seem to work on paywalled Medium articles.
Not trying to point fingers or make a comment on the value of the article's content, but it's worth noting that 7 links from this Medium account have been submitted in the past 10 days. All of the previously submitted articles are similarly paywalled.
> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.
It also says this too, but I think indeed there is no workaround, and that these submissions go against HN's policy & the first guidelines remains:
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
Beloved technology partner? Your mileage may vary.