Important Microsoft pricing update
From 1 January 2017, Microsoft are raising the price of their cloud services and enterprise software by 22% for customers purchasing in British pounds. Microsoft state this is to adjust pricing to “realign close to Euro levels”.
Unfortunately this means that we will need to reluctantly raise our prices for these services in line with this increase. Prices affected are for cloud services (such as Office 365 and Hosted Exchange) and enterprise software (such as Office, Windows and Windows Server).
Please note that these increases will only apply on renewal of services or addition of users/licenses — pricing for existing services and users/licenses is protected until renewal.
Please see below for an extract from Microsoft’s announcement. And you can find their full post here. You may have also seen this in the press, for example The Telegraph’s article here.
Effective January 1, 2017, we will be increasing British pound pricing to harmonise prices for enterprise software and cloud services within the EU/EFTA region. We periodically assess the impact of local pricing of our products and services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across the region and this change is an outcome of this assessment. These changes are similar to the recent harmonisation adjustments to pricing in Norwegian krone and Swiss franc we made in April 2016.
From January, British pound prices for on-premises enterprise software will increase by 13% to realign close to euro levels. Most enterprise cloud prices in British pounds will increase by 22% to realign close to euro levels. 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. In the EU/EFTA region, partners will continue to have access to prevailing prices in euro, Norwegian krone, Swiss franc, Swedish krona, and Danish krone, along with revised prices in British pounds.
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 twelve 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.”