Microsoft this week announced some changes to the pricing of its on-premises and cloud products, including Office 2019 and Windows 10 Enterprise. For starters, the company is making some changes to its pricing structure so as to offer more transparency and consistency across purchasing channels. These changes include:
Establishing a single, consistent starting price across all programs aligned to web direct for online services (OLS)
Removing the programmatic volume discounts (Level A and Open Level C) in Enterprise Agreement (EA)/EA Subscription, MPSA, Select/ Select Plus, and Open programs (Open, Open Value, Open Value Subscription)
Aligning government pricing for on-premises and online services to the lowest commercial price in EA/EAS, MPSA, Select Plus, and Open Programs
Delivering a newly designed Customer Price Sheet that better outlines how a customer’s price was derived (direct EA/EAS only)
In addition to the structural changes, Microsoft is also adjusting some of its offerings specifically. Office 2019, for example, will cost 10% more than the current on-premises pricing, and that affects the Office clients as well as Enterprise Client Access Licenses (CAL), Core CAL and server products.
Windows 10 Enterprise E3 will also see some adjustments, starting with simplified names. Windows 10 Enterprise E3 per User will now simply become Windows 10 Enterprise E3, as the "per device" offering becomes simply Windows 10 Enterprise. The latter will also see its price increase to match that of the new Windows 10 Enterprise E3. Lastly, Windows 10 Enterprise E5 per device will be discontinued.
Microsoft says these changes are part of its attempt to move from program-centric pricing structures to user-centric ones, and that does seem to be the case seeing as subscribers of "per device" offerings seem to be the most affected by the move. All of the changes will be visible in the October 2018 price list, and customers will be able to preview them in September.
Via: OnMSFT
21 Comments - Add comment