Technology major Microsoft is set to increase price of enterprise software and cloud services in India.
The revised price of Microsoft will be effective from January 1, 2017, according to information from the IT trade community.
The increase in Indian rupee price will be for enterprise software and cloud services in India.
There is no official confirmation from Microsoft India.
The price for enterprise cloud services will increase by 10 percent in Indian rupee to realign close to global levels – from January 1, 2017. The retail price of on-premises enterprise software will go up by 15 percent to adjust for inflation since the previous adjustment in January 2014 and realign close to global levels.
Microsoft periodically assesses the impact of its local pricing of software and cloud products and services to ensure reasonable alignment across markets.
For business customers, these changes will not affect existing partner orders under annuity volume licensing agreements for products that are subject to price protection.
Prices for new product additions under such volume licensing agreements and purchases under new contracts will be as defined by the channel pricelist at the time of order. Changes apply to customers based in India only.
Microsoft has undertaken a balanced approach to adjust prices in India. In January 2014, Microsoft adjusted prices in India. Cloud customers across India will still find Microsoft cloud offerings very competitive.
Customers in India can continue to take advantage of low prices to purchase products and cloud services, and lock new contracts at the existing price level till 31 December 2016.
Stuart Williams, vice president at TBR, recently said the future path of applications is starting to emerge, as product categories begin to collapse into user-centric front ends that enable collaboration, communication and functional tasks such as sales, marketing or manufacturing.
The US-headquartered Microsoft took a big step down that path by integrating its Dynamics CRM and ERP packages. Microsoft’s business applications future includes LinkedIn data and people-based data to facilitate interaction and commerce.
Kelsey Mason, analyst at TBR, said Microsoft’s Cloud growth offset declines in traditional licensing in key product segments like Commercial Office, as Microsoft maintained its steadfast emphasis on increasing lifetime customer value. Sixty percent of the Fortune 500 uses three or more Microsoft cloud services. On-premises growth will instead come from enabling the creation of hybrid and private environments.
Much like competitor Salesforce, artificial intelligence (AI) will underpin Microsoft’s applications, platforms and operating systems. Microsoft’s value proposition around AI only gets stronger as the company creates synergies across its portfolio, evidenced by Dynamics 365.
Microsoft is offering a migration promotion to VMware vSphere customers, giving a free Windows Server Datacenter 2016 license to VMware vSphere customers between Sept. 1, 2016, and June 30, 2017. To qualify, customers need to purchase Software Assurance, allowing Microsoft to collect the lucrative maintenance streams despite giving the license away for free.
Microsoft will offer the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) for converting VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V.
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com

