Scott Braden

Aug. 29,2018 | news, Software, Office365, SaaS, Microsoft, Cloud

You may recall from our alert in July, Microsoft has substantial changes to their pricing due to take effect October 1, 2018.  This pricing will cascade globally from Redmond product managers.  As a result, we anticipate an incredibly busy September as customers try to understand what the impact will be and how best to optimize their agreements.  The actual pricing is due to be available to resellers on September 1, 2018 and will likely become widely available soon after.

In addition to the changes we previously communicated (see below), here are a few of the latest updates that have come to our attention:

• “Level A” is going away.  Any Microsoft customer with less than 1,500 pc’s / users, will pay retail rates  (“Open”).

• All products in the “Office” family, a large brand umbrella including SharePoint, Exchange, 365, and more, are going up at least 10% - Translation: It will be way MORE than 10%.

• There will be an accelerated push of Microsoft’s smaller customers away from EA and toward the CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) contract model.  The CSP version only offers cloud SKUs – no on premise or perpetual licenses offered.

Action Required:

1. On September 1, 2018 – Immediately secure the pricing updates and review for impact.
2. Prepare for an early renewal – regardless of your current end date.  If your renewal is Q1 or Q2 2019 - don't wait until then to talk to us, the time to start is now.
3. Contact us for immediate assistance on either of the above and or questions on the pricing update, and how best to optimize your deployments.

Changes from our last alert (July 2018):

• 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)
• Office 2019 commercial prices will increase 10 percent over current on-premises pricing
• The price increase will include Office client, Enterprise CAL, Core CAL, and server products
• Windows 10 Enterprise E3 offers will be renamed:
  • E3 will now refer to the per user offer only
  • Windows 10 Enterprise E3 per User becomes Windows 10 Enterprise E3
  • Windows 10 Enterprise E3 per Device becomes Windows 10 Enterprise
• The price of Windows 10 Enterprise will be raised to match the price of Windows 10 Enterprise E3
• Windows 10 Enterprise E5 per device will be discontinued

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