A proprietary software vendor does not merely sell a product. It cultivates a workforce whose income depends on selling more of it. Salesforce's own commissioned research celebrates the result: a partner ecosystem already about five times the size of Salesforce itself, projected to earn $6.19 for every dollar Salesforce earns by 2026.1 That is a sales force the vendor never puts on its payroll, trained and certified in its own methods, and rewarded for what it recommends.
The reason such a workforce exists is that commercial software has grown too complex to follow casually. To stay abreast of change and remain relevant, IT people wed themselves to a single product ecosystem and become experts in it: Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, Google, Amazon, Oracle, Apple, Salesforce, SAP, IBM, Adobe, Nutanix, and now the AI platforms. That marriage is not free, and its real cost often lands years later, once a firm is locked in deeply enough that leaving would cost more than staying. Weeks after buying VMware, Broadcom ended sales of new perpetual licenses and cut off the support renewals that owners of existing ones relied on, leaving subscription the only way forward;2 the next year AT&T's lawsuit alleged a proposed one-year increase of 1,050 percent on support for licenses it had already bought.3 That is what it can cost when the landlord decides to raise the rent.
The newest of these landlords is the most seductive of all. Every AI platform now sells itself as the one tool a business will ever need, a single prescription for every ailment, and the pressure to bet the whole stack on one of them is greater than any older ecosystem could exert. It is the single-pill promise in its purest form, and the firm that accepts it has chosen its one medicine before knowing what the illness requires.
The vendors are not villains for any of this, and their certified experts even less so. They are here to make money, as every business is. But is becoming the serf of a Big Tech landlord in the best interest of a small or midsize business?
None of this means the specialist has no place. There is a legitimate role for the single-medicine doctor in healthcare, and it is called an anesthesiologist. But an anesthesiologist is not what a growing family needs, and a family can afford neither a standing team of specialists nor a trip to the hospital every time a child is sick.
What a family needs is a general practitioner, a doctor who understands the particular ailments of each of the family members and knows the best affordable cure and preventive care for each of these ailments.
The same is true of a growing business. It needs a general IT practitioner, not a one-pill doctor and not an IT hospital either:* a generalist who can recommend a specialist when one is genuinely required, whose counsel is measured on the business's results rather than on the vendor's sales. That independence is the standard to hold any IT advisor to, an incumbent or a challenger alike. It is the standard our Stewards are built around, and the reason our advice answers only to the client who pays for it.
Concierge CIO Partners is a unified Guild of senior technologists providing dedicated, long-term fiduciary IT leadership to midmarket service firms. It offers a strategic alternative to fragile internal IT silos and to Managed Service Providers who advise you on what to buy and are paid on what you buy. With transparent unit pricing and an automated service catalog, the Guild eliminates administrative bloat and ensures every IT dollar spent and decision made directly drives your financial performance. A doctor you can trust does not own the pharmacy, and the Guild is built the same way: its only product is its judgment.
* Read also Dedicated Server vs Cloud. 1 Salesforce's commissioned IDC study projects its partner ecosystem will earn $6.19 for every dollar Salesforce earns by 2026, and be more than six times Salesforce's own size: Salesforce and IDC, The Salesforce Economy. 2 Broadcom ended sales of new VMware perpetual licenses and of support renewals for existing ones, moving all offerings to subscription and term licenses; announced 11 December 2023: Broadcom News. 3 AT&T's September 2024 filing alleged Broadcom proposed a one-year increase of 1,050 percent on support for perpetual licenses AT&T already owned; the parties later settled: The Register.