General Consultant Discussion

Sound Familiar?? http://www.eonesolutions.com/an-open-letter-to-microsoft-on-convergence-2016/

Yes and in fairness Microsoft was talking about this prior to Convergence 2015. I don't know if the meetings were press only but I definitely heard about this two or three months before Convergence. Realistically these companies look at the sales numbers. If they aren't selling license and people are (arguably) trapped into renewing maintenance due to switching costs - why host these expensive conferences and educate people for free?

Free? I think they were charging like $1600 per person not including hotel lodging and only offering like 1 or 2 meals per day.

Yes you are right - MSFT is definitely charging. Somewhere someone did a cost benefit analysis. If you're going to bring in a big rock band and sponsor dinners why not aim it at decision makers. The article did bring up a very good point about the definition of decision maker. The Microsoft execs presume that CEO, CFO are always the decision makers and that is not always true - in many cases it is users who are given the authority to select ERP/CRM, etc.