I think you'd have to include a large majority of IT personnel in this figure, as they are the likely first line of support for many windows installs.

That number is probably much higher than 1 million.

Apples to oranges, of course. The interesting part is that MS scaled their support to include people paid by their customers directly because their software was so business critical.

Even high-tier MS support isn't great. You may rely on it and `need` the support, but you don't really need it.

What? I'm guessing you've never actually paid for an MS Support Call?

They will work through your issue no matter what until a resolution is reached.

I'm sure I don't have experience with every tier of their support, but I've dealt with both Microsoft Partner support and paid support contracts for both Windows Server and SQL Server.

They will definitely help you, eventually, and the problem will eventually get fixed. However, eventually (in my experience) has been usually several days.

Microsoft, like Cisco, HP, and many other enterprise vendors, doesn't have much (or anything) in the way of call centers for the peons. End-users are expected to call their VAR or distributor or OEM.

What they do have are private support lines for certified partners that are every computer nerd's dream of what tech support should be like. Partners are expected to absorb the stupid questions, and can escalate interesting cases to the manufacturer, who will treat you like an adult IT specialist.

I worked at various small business networking/telephony firms in high school. We had a number for Cisco where you could get a real engineer on the phone, explain what you had tried, and talk through troubleshooting together as peers. He would ask for log files, give you commands to run, talk through the peculiarities of that customer's installation, etc. You'd get the same engineer sometimes, so you kind of got to know each other. They even keep track of your ticket number in their ticketing system.

I'll never forget my call to HP. I had been given a monitor that was dead and asked to troubleshoot it. I called the HP partner support line, explained what I had tried, and fully expected to be patronizingly walked through the process of repeating those same steps according to the agent's script. Nope. "Okay, we'll go ahead and RMA that for you, can you give me the serial number?" Holy shit. At that point my main support experiences were Road Runner (Time Warner Cable) and Dell. I was absolutely blown away.

Shame I don't pull that kind of access anymore. Then again, I can always walk over to the IT department that does.