He says it's difficult to remain a trusted source in the marketplace if you're trying to provide advice to clients on what to buy while simultaneously trying to sell products to them.
"I think separation of Church and State is much better in some ways. Services companies have a certain level of expertise that are different to what a software company has," he told ZDNet Australia . "You're going to have a trusted source problem there".
NetIQ offer consulting services, however they are of the post sales variety -- they're only based on NetIQ's own products.
That's not to say everyone can't do it. Giants like IBM Global Services are somewhat immune from the effects because they've made a conscious decision to focus more on services than products, Mychalczuk said.
"Does IBM Global Services push just IBM products? No. Because they can't," he said. "In this case it's the credibility of the services organisation. The trade off to that is that they have to 'play Switzerland' and look across competitors".
Smaller software companies don't always have the luxury of turning customers away from their own solution as a part of the consulting process.
"Smaller companies... that is a harder concept to get their brain around. They're trying to perpetuate their market share," Mychalczuk said.
He was in Sydney to present at the Microsoft Management Summit, which was held in on June 18 - 19.
