Microsoft is set to increase the price of some of its licences by about 15 per cent in the summer. From 1 July – the start of the vendor’s FY16 – the price of on-premise User Client Access Licences (CALs) will jump 15 per cent when priced per user.
All volume licensing programmes – including academic and government – will be included in the price boost, but those buying CALs on fixed-price contracts such as Enterprise Agreements will not.
In a blog post to customers issued this morning, reseller Softcat said there are ways to avoid the hikes.
It said signing a new fixed-price agreement before 1 July would be one option, as would licensing CALs on a per-device basis instead, as these are not affected. Moving to the cloud would be another way to avoid the extra cost, Softcat said.
“[Customers can] purchase cloud suites – Office 365 Enterprise, Enterprise Mobility Suite and Enterprise Cloud Suite – that provide dual access to both online services and on-premises server software,” the reseller said. “With this option, customers will also benefit from additional enterprise functionality and a user-centric licensing model. [They could also] lock in the price of any additional user CAL products that they require over the course of their agreement before the price increase.”
SOURCE: channelweb.co.uk
Even with a 15% price hike, the Cloud option CALs will still be more expensive after 3 years renting (company migration cycles are always 3+ years).