Just a few minutes ago I got a short telephone call from Singapore.

Why? The regional office of SW that has oversight of New Zealand is there, apparently.

A pleasant lady asked me some questions, I guess to update their customer records, asked about how I rate local VARs, SW etc, and generally promoted SW2010 and its availability as a download for trial. Hmmm...

Despite having a little difficulty with each other's accent we made a good job of it.

This type of remote call from SW is a first and it left me wondering what the real reason for it was.

I concluded sales and subs are well down with the global economic morass...

Further, now that we have two VAR companies in Australasia, chasing the same number of customers as used to be serviced by one, things are tight enough to do some larger chasing, and to encourage laggers and late adopters.

What didn't fit into our neatly planned conversation, and I didn't want to ruin her day with, was that I only upgrade every few releases if something significant makes it worth the hassle of dealing with a fresh set of bugs, and that I couldn't be bothered messing up my workstn with a trial install.

I have this policy for sound practical reasons, and from having learned from tough experience not to be a slave to endless change and impulse.

If SW want to have me spending more often it is up to them to come up with substantially better quality control 'out of the box', and have better, more flexible, subs deals. Concentrating on real features rather than UI makeovers would help their cause as well.

Aside from the local economy being 'careful' about expenditure I full well expect the US dollar to lose quite a bit of its value by the end of next year.

I am not in a big hurry to spend on SW soon...

If the dollar does tank there is no way I am going to keep paying for software and subs in terms of what I have paid in NZ dollars in the past.

If the SW accounting dept have that in mind they best think again.

Users outside the US already pay a premium for the purchase of SW.

I suspect a lot of users will be thinking carefully and strategically about upgrading in the next few years.

There is no better and more important time for SW management to review their fundamental business model than right now.

They best be ahead of the game and decisive because it is highly likely the 'downturn' will be persistent and inside the US it may even last decades.

SW had better be thinking more seriously about their future than making goodwill phone calls to small operators at the bottom of the planet.

cheers.