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Microsoft Will Squeeze Datacenters On Price of Windows Server
Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft plans to raise the price of the Datacenter edition of the upcoming R2 release of Windows Server 2012 by 28 percent, adding to what analysts call a record number of price increases for enterprise software products from Redmond. According to licensing data sheets available for download from the Windows Server 2012 R2 Website (PDF), the price of a single license of Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter will be $6,155, compared to $4,809 today—plus the cost of a Client Access Licenses for every user or device connecting to the server. News of the increase was posted yesterday by datacenter virtualization and security specialist Aidan Finn, a six-time Microsoft MVP who works for Dublin-based value added reseller MicroWarehouse Ltd. and has done work for clients including Amdahl, Fujitsu and Barclays. The increase caps off a year filled with a record number of price increases for Microsoft enterprise software, according to a Tweet yesterday from Microsoft software licensing analyst Paul DeGroot of Pica Communications."
Well it's too late. If you need a Windows Datacenter licenses (e.g. for new hardware) then you don't really have a lot of choice, even if you do want to use 2012 or 2008. We have ours on SA. Even with a price hike, it's still a pretty good deal. What's more newsworthy is they have reduced the virtualisation count for Enterprise (down from 4 to 2) and gone to a per-CPU price.
Those businesses that are using Datacenter probably wont notice the actual price hike so much... You only run Datacenter on some serious hardware. (e.g. 20 core, 512GB RAM etc. and there are relatively few requirements in a single org), which is why I think the price hike is overdue. This is the Microsoft equivilant of the VMWare VSphere 5 VMEM fiasco... Something tells me Microsoft are in a better position than VMWARE though.
Jason
R2 doesn't deliver any outstanding new features, but with higher and higher consolidation ratios this was pretty much inevitable, we've gone from 72GB to 144GB to 384GB of ram in our hosts in 3.5 years while the cost of the hardware has actually dropped. Since datacenter edition allows unlimited virtualization that means people need fewer license and hence to keep up revenue costs per license rise. Trust me, the other MS prices from last fall had a MUCH larger impact on most enterprises EA renewal than this little increase will.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
No.. I don't think Red Hat will see that much, some, but most folks will be heading to Cent-OS if they are Red Hat shops and start feeling the cost pinch too much. My guess is that ALL Linux distributions and vendors will see an uptick in their server installs, starting with the ones that have the latest SAMBA version on the install media.
Where I do like Red Hat's support, it is wildly expensive and overkill for most low end shops who are not trying to push the envelop of the bleeding edge. Cent-OS is by definition the same thing as Red Hat offerings, minus the up-line's copyrighted graphics and trademarks and a whole lot of subscription fees. You might have to wait days, weeks or even months for the latest release, but they eventually come.
The guys that really should be jacking up the prices are the training houses that get paid to convert Windows admins into Linux Admins. THAT'S where the money will be made when Micro$oft starts turning the thumb screws to hard.
Actually... I'm betting Micro$oft has studied this and figures that the increase in fees will offset any defections to Linux they may see going forward. I'd figure that they are likely pretty close to being right and should they see too many folks defecting, they will quickly change the price or do some rebate deal to stop it. Micro$oft won't loose on this deal.. Trust me.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So you mean this is why Microsoft's net income has basically TRIPLED over the last 10 years?
Profit isn't really the best measurement of the success of a company in an expanding industry. Even if your profit increased, if over the same period you've lost market share, you've essentially failed. Not that I have any clue what MS market share looks like over the last 10 years; you still might be correct.