Sergey Nivens - Fotolia
Against a backdrop of Microsoft price rises it's time for the SAM message
Planned price changes that come in from Monday should mean that those pitching software asset management should find a more receptive audience
With Microsoft's price rises just a matter of days away the channel is being urged to use software asset management as a means of alleviating the hikes.
Back in the summer Microsoft made it clear that from the 1 October that there would be 'price adjustments for on-premises and cloud products'.
Although there the changes aimed to introduce single prices in some areas and the removal of complicated discount structures in others it was the headlines from the planned 10% in commercial prices of Office 2019 and the price of Windows 10 Enterprise increasing to match the price of the Enterprise E3 offering that caught the eye.
Matt Fisher, SVP product strategy at Snow Software, said that those customers that did not keep a grip on their software spending could end up paying more.
“With Microsoft running in nearly all enterprises, many customers in both the private and public sector will feel the pain of the price adjustments set to come into effect on October 1 this year. Microsoft Office 2019 price hikes will result in increased spend for organisations, especially those who are not measuring their software usage and reconciling it against what they are paying for," he said.
He added that Microsoft wanted customers to head towards the cloud and the pricing changes had been made to encourage that behaviour.
"There are benefits associated with a move to Microsoft’s cloud-based products, but if your organisation isn’t set up to take advantage of them, you could find yourself missing out on opportunities to improve infrastructure efficiency as well as optimise and consolidate licensing. While productivity server product prices will increase by 10%, the RDS per Device CAL price will increase 30% to match the per user price,” he said.
Where the channel can step in and help with the situation is to help users get a firm grip on their licensing and look at using SAM tools to get on top of the situation.
"The price changes make it more important than ever that the right users have the right licensing and subscription plans in place – be sure to have an efficient process to effectively monitor your cloud subscription usage," said Fisher.
