TechNet: retired the day legitimate labs got harder than piracy
Microsoft retired TechNet subscriptions, ending cheap full-product labs for IT pros
The market's verdict: -6.7% on MSFT in the week after.
What actually happened
TechNet Standard let IT professionals buy cheap, legitimate licenses for almost everything Microsoft made, so they could build real labs at home. Microsoft killed it in 2013, blamed abuse, and pointed everyone to time limited evaluation copies instead. Actual piracy did not notice. The people who paid to do things right lost their toolkit. IT forums have brought it up basically every week since, usually while setting up another 180 day eval VM.
This one is officially acknowledged.
Links
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Context
- Wikipedia (wikipedia)
↳ caused by TechNet subscription retirement
Timeline
- Aug 31, 2013 Stood by it Microsoft stood by it.