Mike Austin

Mike Austin leads the delivery team at Method 180.  Mike brings more than 15 years of Microsoft licensing experience to his clients’ projects.  He assists companies, from Fortune 500 to organizations with as few as 500 employees, with negotiations of Microsoft Enterprise Agreements (EA), Premier Support Contracts and Select Agreements.  He has a vast amount of experience across multiple industries including:

financial services, high tech, manufacturing, media, health care, government and retail.  In addition to helping negotiate contracts he assists clients with creating and implementing software asset management processes to prevent over-purchasing of licenses and ensures terms and conditions reflect actual usage.

Previously Mike was employed by Microsoft for more than 8 years, where he:

•Successfully negotiated 300+ new and renewal EAs with a total contract value of over $1B;

•Negotiated legal terms and conditions for all software agreements;

•Authored amendments for concessions granted to customers and collaborated with legal teams to ensure wording was correct and in accordance with internal policies;

•Developed best practices for global account management at Microsoft;

•Member of the global sales execution team responsible for the development of Software Assurance (SA) benefits; helped create the Disaster Recovery SA benefit for sales within the Microsoft Server Product Group as well as the Microsoft Home Use Program SA benefit;

•Advisory member of Windows VEC-Design team; worked with Windows product team to design the predecessor licensing to Windows VDI/VDA licensing models;

•Helped develop business terms for Select Plus program;

•Regularly assisted customers in understanding their technology deployments and determining best licensing solutions/pricing options to meet their deployment requirements and

•Won Microsoft’s prestigious Gold Star Award in 2003 and Circle of Excellence in 2008 for outstanding contributions.