4. “I owe my life to Microsoft and my mortgage, or rather my lack of mortgage, to Microsoft. My children owe their inheritance to Microsoft. Without Bill Gates, without what Microsoft did for this industry, none of us would be here.”
Despite branding Microsoft “hard to work with”, Norris said the software giant is “in a different league to everyone else”.
Norris only paid this tribute after telling a story about how he and Computacenter Chairman, Peter Ryan, were given the cold shoulder by Microsoft during a whistle-stop tour of US vendor HQs a few years back.
“The red carpet was rolled out and we were treated like Gods,” he recalled. “Then on the last day we got to Microsoft and they said, ‘You what? Can you just sit over there in the corner?’. We had four meetings scheduled at Microsoft. Three people didn’t turn up and the other one had to leave early.”
Mic drop rating:
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