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Microsoft will increase the purchase price of its business software and cloud solutions in the UK. These price hikes will begin January 1st 2017. Enterprise cloud services prices will increase by 22 per cent and business software prices will be inflated by 13 per cent.
Microsoft justified these changes in a blog post: “Even after this adjustment, customers across the region buying in British pound will still find our cloud offerings highly competitive. For indirect sales where Microsoft products are sold through resellers, final prices and currency of sale will continue to be determined by them.
“For business customers, these changes will not affect existing orders under annuity volume licensing agreements for products that are subject to price protection. For example, customers with Enterprise Agreements have price protection on previously ordered enterprise software and cloud services, and will not experience a price change during the term of their agreement.
“Similarly, business customers with cloud commitment subscriptions such as Office 365 also receive price protection during their subscription term, which is normally 12 months from the start of paid subscription. Prices for new product additions under existing volume licensing agreements and purchases under new contracts will be as defined by the price list at the time of order.”
The reception to this change has been largely negative, one Microsoft supplier told The Register: “The mystery is the price difference in pricing increases for cloud and on-premise. The justification was rubbish. Basically it is claiming the cost for running cloud is a direct hit.”
Microsoft also explained that consumer software and cloud solutions would not be subject to any price inflation.
