Financing Terms Worry Microsoft Partners

Microsoft Corp. is tightening the requirements on financing partner sales – a move some partners say will be hard to swallow, especially in the sour economic environment.

The software company is requiring that all deals it finances for its indirect sales partners include a minimum of 35 percent of Microsoft’s software or services. Previously, financed deals only needed to include a single Microsoft product to qualify.

The requirement for more than one third of the project total be spent on Microsoft is going to challenge partners quoting multivendor deals. And some say it will reduce the number of deals that will get done since financing has been a reliable selling point.