News: Microsoft Price Rises - July 2012



Updated: 17th May 2012
Microsoft have suspended the price rises until January 2013 - while the impact will still be felt by our customers at a later date, this does give us opportunity to discuss how we can help customers minimise additional costs and give you a greater period without the increases. Our team will be in contact soon to discuss your options.

2nd May 2012
It is with some regret we have to announce that Microsoft will be increasing the price of many of its software licenses from July 2012 which will impact the costs our customers pay when licensing some Microsoft Products.

This typically affects customers taking Microsoft License Agreements through us - such as the Open/Open Value Schemes and similar plans. The increases in some plans will be as much as 33% which represents a significant difference and something we have been actively campaigning against.

Why is this happening?

Microsoft have been "aligning" its pricing to try and make pricing consistent across financial trading zones, and it has been the case for some time that the software licensing cost in the UK has been "lower" than some other regions - leading to overseas companies buying through the UK to save money - this means Microsoft's partners in other countries feel it an unfair advantage. Naturally we see this as an unreasonable argument since the reality of these changes are very real for you as our customers.

What is affected?

Any of the Microsoft Licensing Schemes where you're enrolled through us to purchase software from them - most commonly subscription agreements for products like Microsoft Office.

It also has an impact on a special type of agreement we have with Microsoft which allows us to provide Microsoft Products to our customers - either directly - such as on one of our VPower Virtual Servers, or indirectly such as through Agility Desktop and Agility Mail. We're currently assessing the full impact of these changes to our existing customers taking these services. It is unlikely we can avoid a price increase in the near future, but are doing everything possible to keep this to an absolute minimum - unlike Microsoft we appreciate the difficult conditions many of our customers face and have been working to keep our costs to a minimum to help.

We therefore anticipate that:

We are very disappointed that this has been done by Microsoft at a time where customers face higher operating costs and many are finding business weak. We're committed to trying to minimise the impact of these changes as best we can for you, but given the scale of the increases simply cannot guarantee in this instance we can absorb them for you.

What do I need to do?

At this stage you need do nothing in most cases. If you were considering licensing Microsoft software, now is a great time to do it because if you complete and purchase with us before the increases you'll not have to receive those increases, and for any "subscriptions" your price will be locked to the end of that agreement.

If you're using any of our services (directly or indirectly) that use Microsoft products we'll contact you as more information is available to us to allow us to make the necessary changes.

<< Back to the News/Blog

<<
 

IT Survey & Challenge Quiz!IT Survey & Challenge Quiz!

Are you getting the best out of your IT?

Take the Quiz

Popular VPWSYS Services:

Backup Services - From just £8.00 a month, affordable protection against loss of data
Domain Names - We provide Domain Name services from just £9.37 + VAT
Pre-Paid Support - On the phone and in person, and you're only charged for the time you use.