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Microsoft Steeply Raising Enterprise Licensing Fees
hypnosec writes "Microsoft is trying to make up for below expected earnings following Windows 8's and Surface RT's lack luster adoption rates by increasing the prices of its products between 8 and 400 per cent. Trying to make more out of its enterprise customers who are tied under its Software Assurance payment model, Microsoft has increased user CALs pricing 15 per cent; SharePoint 2013 pricing by 38 per cent; Lync Server 2013 pricing by 400 per cent; and Project 2013 Server CAL by 21 per cent."
I see: so if demand goes down, price goes up?
Good luck with that ...
It's strong-arming if you vendor lock a customer than steeply raise rates. blah blah free market blah blah still an adversarial dick move.
I hate sigs.
It's a free market. Microsoft is not forcing anyone to buy its products. If may be mildly coercive in the short term to companies that feel they "must" use Microsoft products, but raising prices is also the best method to charge customers what the product is really worth to them.
If it's worth it to switch, they will. But if not, then fair is fair.
A free market? Are you shitting me? Microsoft has a near monopoly on corporate workstations. If it was a free market then you wouldn't need to make a free operating system like Linux just to try to compete. Microsoft has worked long and hard to make sure that nobody can compete with them by erecting barriers to the free market. The free market is Microsoft's enemy number one.
Funny, I've been running my Linux desktops for like 15 years, so I guess I'm not doing 95% of whatever the Windows people are using. Of course, we also use Linux on our desktops at work, which is like 200 machines, so I guess we don't get any work done either.
Windows is required for gaming, nothing else.
If it was a free market then you wouldn't need to make a free operating system like Linux just to try to compete.
Just remember that Linus created Linux because the UNIX licenses were too expensive (this was the early 90's).
It was not created as an alternative to Windows, but an alternative to the expensive, proprietary UNIX versions. In that respect one can say that it has been a fantastic success.
Some people can't put their brains in that place.
At work a problem once ensued when a person wanted to set up an MSSQL server for a project. My boss said "too expensive." I asked what language, he said VB.net. I said great! Have you considered mysql? He said it would violate license agreements. I said mysql, he heard SQLExpress. Idiot. Another person my boss reports to believes mysql is not a professional database server. It is used by hobbyists. But also used by professionals. It's free. It can't be good right? Forget that commercial licenses can be had and that Oracle now owns it.
People, and especially decision makers, simply can't wrap their heads around not using Microsoft for everything. The mental impairment is very visible to me. It's one thing to prefer one thing over another, but another to not even learn what the truth may be.
Similar discussion about iPhone/iPad in the business while excluding Android. The reason? Android is unix based and can't be trusted.
Seriously. It's what they believe!!!