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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."
RedHat should see a nice increase in business because of this.
it's almost as if you're trying to get people to use something else.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Datacentre allows unlimited virtualization and consolidation ratios are climbing.
We run around 300 Windows VMs on 16 CPUs, that was a major saving over Windows Server Enterprise Licenses.
Still, the pain.
Jason.
Good, even smaller chances that someone will buy it.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
There are alternatives.
I must, I must increase my going bust
Oi, Microsoft! You're doing it wrong!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
They've got to pay for all of those Slates they have stuck in the warehouse.
Linux? Debian, maybe? Though I'm not sure what the preferred 'server' distro would be... Or maybe unix, perhaps FreeBSD? I know that's wildly popular as a server OS, but I think Debian is much easier to use than any unix variant I've yet tried. There's plenty to choose from. I guess the question would be how the costs to change over compare to the costs to just keep Windows Server.
Forgive me, as I've never run a high volume server before. Just small ones that I've not used far beyond basic personal stuff.
There is a significant install base of Windows in datacenters? Who knew...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
These dramatic price hikes look like Microsoft is working to stem the tide of massive losses with increased revenue in their core product domains. They are running out of options as each new offering falls flat on its face over and over again. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some significant trimming of "non-essential" personnel in the next few years to further boost the quarterly profits.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Your right. If your up to your eyes in shit. Don't make waves.
Princess Leia: Governor Balmer, I should have expected to find you holding Gates' leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.
Governor Balmer: Charming to the last. You don't know how hard I found it, signing the order to terminate your license.
Princess Leia: I'm surprised that you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself.
Governor Balmer: Princess Leia, before your execution, I'd like you to join me for a ceremony that will make this game console operational. No IT department will dare oppose the Emperor now.
Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Balmer, the more data centers will slip through your fingers.
Governor Balmer: Not after we demonstrate the capabilities of Windows 8!
This is an increase in the cost of the Datacenter version, not a comparison of the Datacenter version to non-Datacenter versions, so your point is meaningless.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Thank you Microsoft. This makes implementing enterprise strategy so much easier. So let's see.. in the past year we've ditched Microsoft CRM completely. We got rid of 2 SQL Server instances. We will purchase SQL 2012, but with only half the CAL's. These price increases make it so much easier to consider other options.
----- obSig
We just left Red Hat - converted the entire datacenter from an OpenLDAP/samba infrastructure on Red Hat 5 & 5 to an AD/windows environment - because Red Hat couldn't (or more acurately wouldn't) meet Microsoft's pricing. The fact that HyperV proved to be fantastically more stable and capable than RHEVM (and RHEVM had Active Directory dependencies) didn't help the situation any, but it was price discrepancy that really did it.
We had to replace hardware anyway, so we priced out new software while we were at it. Microsoft won on value for the dollar, crushing Red Hat (and also VMware). I personally prefer Open Source so I'm kind of bitter about it, but I had to do what was best for the company in order to keep our staff gainfully employed. That's what companies are for, to support people.
I love how people jump in & automatically say they are doing it wrong! This makes the point of asking how are others charging for similar products/services?
the price hike is still 2000 bottles of beer for the company picnic.... still, it's a case of "you're using less produce so hey, pay us more for what you're using so we can keep getting the same money".
ram and cpu price drops being the reason why you could get by with one instead of two.. let's get this out of the way: the whole how the datacenter ed. is priced is stupid and it's just going to either ever increase(as you can run more and more vm's on single license) or they're going to price it by vm instances.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
My licensing costs. Let's see:
CentOS 6 - $0.00
Apache - $0.00
MariaDB - $0.00
PHP - $0.00
GNU C++ - $0.00
TOTAL -- $0.00
Plus number of hours spent auditing licensing: ZERO
Now let's look at my development tools:XCode, SSH, Firefox, Chrome, VIM, and the command line. For an additional zero dollars.
But the best bit is that even if MS said, "Dude you are so wonderful that we will now give you an unlimited license to every product we have completely for free for life." I wouldn't even crack the film wrap on the packaging. It is not out of some religious hatred of MS but that the products I use match my needs perfectly. So for me at least to switch back to MS would be to make my products and productivity worse.
MS is just covering losses on their Surface, it shouldn't be a huge surprise. ;-)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
This is an increase in the cost of the Datacenter version, not a comparison of the Datacenter version to non-Datacenter versions, so your point is meaningless.
Not meaningless at all. Customers dont buy them to play solitare. They buy them to run VMs and the cost of the OS is only one tiny part of the equation. To me even with the price increase I can save double over the cost of VSphere. IT costs keep going up. Mostly sharks like VMWare and Oracle causing it
http://saveie6.com/
Slow down, read what I wrote, and think. Seriously. It doesn't matter what they do with it. The point is that the same product costs more today than it did yesterday. In terms of what it does in comparison to other products, it does the exact same thing as it did yesterday. If you can't understand the point after further consideration then don't quit your day job (I'm assuming you are in the custodial sciences in this case)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
MS should increase all of their licensing costs by 500-1000%
That's a bit much, but I do think they should go for 60%. People will pay it. Balmer is leaving shareholder money on the table.
and they can pull a Nortel while they flush themselves down the toilet.
People only run Microsoft in a data center if they have to. If they have to, they will pay what they need to.
Microsoft's calculation should be thus:
1) what is the average # of servers that one of their clients has?
2) what would it cost that client to switch over to linux?
3) charge 80% of the cost to switch over for licenses for windows.
People running Nortel could (and did) switch to Cisco for less than Nortel was charging.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I run a datacentre of roughly 20-25 servers. Traditionally they were all Windows servers. The Exchange servers and Active Directory and file shares are still Windows based due to simplicity in management however all the application servers have been replaced with Linux. My network management servers (Nagios) are now linux, as are the Tomcat servers, backup servers and various others. Ive gone to Linux for web and spam filtering as well. I would say I have moved up to roughly 50/50 Windows/Linux mix and saved a large amount in Operational costs. The administrative people have noticed I've saved on operational costs and have been able to reuse those funds for some projects instead of throwing money on licensing. What still kills me is the Exchange mailbox licensing. I create a rarely used mailbox for a photo copier and it will cost me an exchange license. Symantec then charged roughly 35 dollars per mailbox per year for premium antispam...brutal.... Our web filter was costing us roughly $1500 a year for 100 concurrent users. I saved about $5000 per year on antispam alone...
Sure, it looks expensive, but Microsoft is throwing in a Surface RT I believe.
Woot!
The license fees for running Linux have effectively doubled every year since it came out.
Thank you for not fitting in my IT budget in any possible way whatsoever. Saves me a lot of time doing cost analysis of all possible options: MS options don't fit in budget even without support hours, so it will have to be an open-source solution, no matter how many hours I may spend on it. I like a back and white world, where I can just ignore grey.
This is what I just love, people who claim they are "stuck" when actually they just don't care. Similar example: "I'm fat because I can't stop eating". There is a special place in hell right here on earth, for those lacking the will to change.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Um not all ERP systems easily port over. Not all CRM systems go over.
A business is more than just word and excel. the accounting programs both front and back end have to be moved. Systems that only get updates every 5-10 years.
I can't move over. there isn't a compatible ERP system with our business processes and we don't have the cash to spend a couple of million building a complete custom system that will go over budget and still not work.
Software also has to work for the business. updating business processes cost several times what the software training does.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Don't worry, once you get out of school and get a real job you will understand how things actually work in the world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Are they insane? Six grand for a server OS that literally can be replicated with any Linux distribution and a few things like SAMBA, Rsnapshot, etc? So long as it LOOKS like a Windows server to the user community, they don't care.
Im fairly certain R2 does more stuff than R1.
You probably think your Microsoft-based ERP system is really great whereas in fact it is an utter piece of crap that is doing your business more harm than good.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Windows Server is the only thing making them money now. They are trying to make up for the money they are losing on tablets and will lose on Xbox 180
Software companies are in a position to be extremely abusive, because it is so difficult to change to new software.
Adobe is doing the same thing: Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only. You will no longer be allowed to have Adobe CS software on your own computer. NSA magnet, and far more expensive. As you are designing a new web site, the NSA will be viewing what you are doing. Or, of course, people who work for Adobe.
For most businesses, even small businesses, the issue isn't the cost of Windows Datacenter licenses and CALs. They pay far more for people to administer the thing. One fully loaded dual-socket server can serve an armada of Windows Server instances (any version) with the license included, Linux servers as well, and petabytes of storage. You just need to load up on the RAM and flash storage the instance images are stored on to get around the I/O bottleneck. They're paying more for the software that enables specific services (database, backup, security, CMS, cloud management, dashboards, email, ad infinitum) to run in these instances. Before you need more than three of these tin boxes (and associated Windows Datacenter licenses) for WAN distributed cluster failover you're a Fortune 1000 company, or you are selling online services and using Linux and probably AWS anyway. One box configured correctly literally has the grunt now to service thousands of end users for customary services like file/print, enpoint management, LOB apps. Most actually pay every license twice just to ensure they don't get publicly shamed by the BSA in an audit, that's how much they care about the price.
The real issue is that Windows server instances are not very good at servicing the currently shifting mix of endpoint devices. Windows Server is notoriously poor at recognizing the existence of the non-Windows devices that make up 80% of endpoint sales these days. At the other 20% they're great! Fortunately in the painful extraction from XP/IE6/ActiveX/MSJAVA most learned their lesson and demanded standard web browser based Line Of Business apps and Linux web server instances have abundant packages and connectivity to get the job done so delivering the required business utility to these endpoints is not a problem.
Microsoft's position has been that these new endpoints are toys. They don't even have Active Directory or IE9 for goshsakes, and Office won't run. So they're not worth supporting. They could come around to the opposite point of view and re-engineer their services for "bring any endpoint" but that bites them on the other end by encouraging people to deploy these devices in preference to endpoints running their own client OS, weakening the "synergy" of their web of codependencies. It also blunts the patent licensing bludgeon they have been using to prevent progress in many ways as these non-Windows endpoints have pretty much worked around their patents.
They're being euchred on the patent thing too. For years they used MPEG-LA to halt progress in video: "You can't do video without taking a license". But then Google bought ON2 - maker of Microsoft's own CODEC and Flash's as well, and Motorola Mobility, which is a bigger dog with MPEG-LA than them, so now they can't even ship an OS that can play a DVD without paying Google money. This is why Media Center is a download app suite now, rather than an OS version shipping on devices. Google is pushing their own better free and open CODEC that has a free patent pledge. ActiveSync, the patented proprietary protocol they used to prevent push email and calendaring to mobile devices is on the ropes: they're in the unenviable position of begging Google to implement it so their own Windows Phone devices can sync with Google services rather than demanding that no devices or services can implement it without paying them a fee. And on and on.
I really think they've been strategically outflanked on every other front. Price though? I don't think that's an issue. I think they could double the price of Datacenter and get away with it.
BTW: If I had to pick a nit with Windows Datacenter licensing it is that you cannot fail a Windows Server instance over from one physical Windows Datacenter server to another and then fail it back in under 30 days without violating the license of the Windows Server instance. At least that was the case last time I checked. Clearly that's a licensing oversight and unlikely to be enforced, but the sort of nit that gives license compliance people fits. Maybe some fine Windows licensing blackbelt will correct me on this in reply, with a proper citation.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Replicated with Linux, a few things like samba, and _a datacenter support contract_
The gap in price gets much lower when you compare apples to apples. If you just want a small cluster of windows servers for your business, you can get that for almost free (included support!)
Where I work is a Microsoft shop. Almost all of the servers are Microsoft with the emphasis on keeping it that way. If I was told to convert 50% my machines over to Linux I could do it pretty quickly. Now will this price increase make this happen?
Actually it hasn't tripled. 200-2003 WAS a bad time for them compared to earlier years, but there's no tripling of profit.
In that same ten years, Google's profit actually HAS increased 100X and Apple's up 586X over the same period.
So the the score is:
Microsoft 2.2
Google 100.0
Apple 586.0
Son, please tell me you do not work for a for profit company?
Let me explain it for you. Lets say there is a race and the MS Soapbox Express is hurtling along faster and faster every moment. Sounds like they are doing really well. Problem is that the race is on a downward sloping hill and everyone else brought engines. The fate of our beloved soapbox racer is suddenly not looking good.
Now, son, do you understand how increasing profit is irrelevant to the measure of success if not compared to the competition in a growing market?
Who says it is MS CRM or whatever?
Fact of the matter I.T.is there to help them do business. Nothing more and nothing less. They do not care about freedom or what someone says on slashdot. They use software that is made for Windows only to do this. Just because it runs on Windows does not mean it is crap.
It has been said a million times people do not want to be free of Microsoft. Slashdotters who have not run Windows in a decade are unaware it is not based on DOS anymore. It doesn't crash. It is not buggy anymore. It works. Maybe there is no other peice of software that works for thier niche set of processes that is available on Unix? Maybe the CEO had a round of golf with the sales person and no platform was discussed when they shook hands on it with a beer later?
In many ways Linux is not favorable to the average person who sees no need to free themselves?
Linux does not even have a stable ABI which means an update can break ATI drivers. It is not a good desktop OS for this reason as Hairyfeet has mentioned he tried selling Linux boxen. Customers always return them when an update breaks something or a printer doesn't work. Since Windows has an ABI it means a driver or piece of software will work between versions! Unix has it but Linux does not as it would encourage people to write binary blobs ... oh the horrors.
I favor FreeBSD for this reason but you need an expensive Redhat certified system because of the driver issue and them working with the server vendor so you save little if anything anyway. Add VSphere to the mix and it is more expensive than Windows Data center on the same hardware if you want to run virtual machines.
Office and Photoshop work. SAP works. That VBA macro for Excel and Access that Bob wrote in Finance that is now a central business process that makes money works! You cost money as a cost center.
Now who do you think the big boss will listen too? Bob that wrote that VBA macro/SAP salesperson that generated 3 million dollars, or some nerd who recites things from RMS who costs $60,000 a year? Your ass will be shown the door. Simple.
I used to be like you but man the real world is different than my Moms place and college where I played with Linux and FreeBSD. Money is money and whatever helps generate it with the least hassle wins and of course politics if you want job security.
http://saveie6.com/
It does matter what they do with it to justify the expense.
If the hypervisor is improved it means ditching VSphere and better I/O means less SANs so the cost would be offset.
http://saveie6.com/
See, this crap is why the likes of you need to slowly rot away spouting your nonsense in a dying business that hasn't got the cojones to break its Microsoft habit, or any other habit that will inevitably lead to its demise at the hands of more efficient competitors.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I'm certain that if I write a 1 line script my computer "does more things". I am not sure if you are intentionally missing the point or not. The OP was claiming that the price increase from"R1" (not called that, I know) to R2 can be justified because it allows virtualization (as does "R1"). It was a stupid comment that tried to compare oranges to bananas when it is really just a slightly (infinitesimally?) bigger orange (and if Microsoft is true to form, more bitter as well.)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You must be new to IT.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"There is no online software."
That's not what everyone is saying. Read the comments to this article.
Are they insane? Six grand for a server OS that literally can be replicated with any Linux distribution and a few things like SAMBA, Rsnapshot, etc? So long as it LOOKS like a Windows server to the user community, they don't care.
I take it you have not seen an Oracle License for Solaris have you?
They go for up to $100,000 as the database is part of the deal whether you need it or not!
$6,000 is laughable cheap as the real cost comes when Samba doesn't work for a 3,000 user environment where shit wont break because of a Windows Update to the clients or if you need virtualization.
VSPhere last time I looked was $8000+. So $6,000 is -$2000 less than debian plus VSPhere to run your virtual machines believe it or not. Dynamic I/o that moves the requests to the least uitilized SAN/volume means hardware savings too and Linux (outside of IBM's flavor) still does not have this.
The enteprise is totally different than the desktop world.
http://saveie6.com/
Well appearently you are as you do not know what a real business needs in the enterprise market are and never worked in such an environment before.
http://saveie6.com/
It adds more virtualization features that "R1" does not have-- off the top of my head, I believe better physical device virtualization (ie, I want the serial port to be accessible in a VM; or I want a PCIe card to be directly accessible by the guest). Thats not something you can just add with a script.
You really dont seem to get that R2 is, as it always has been, quite a bit more than just a minor upgrade. Its not quite a new OS / kernel, but a lot of new tech is usually added-- enough that there is usually a domain and forest functional level with AD.
You might as well claim that vSphere v5 doesnt do anything "more" than v4, since they both virtualize. Except that one supports storage tiering, more robust HA / FT, larger extents, etc, so theyre not comparable at all.
That most businesses don't even care about the cost of Windows. It is the defacto standard, it is the only thing that matters to them on the market. Linux is fun, but not as complete as Windows. It doesn't tie into Windows desktops, it doesn't have .NET or the programming environment of Windows. Linux feels hacked together, incomplete. It is not a commercial product with everything included that you could possibly want.
I am also sure, that $6000 dollars for a Data Center OS isn't much to most people. It excludes the consumers out there from affording it, but corporations and businesses? It is a small part of their bottom line. I think Microsoft realized they could charge almost anything for it. They already excluded the penny pinching start up and home user from buying it, just by charging for it. Anyone that has money though can easily afford it, at nearly any cost, which I am sure is what Microsoft knows. I am not saying Linux is not competitive, it is a great OS, but when it comes to customers of MS and Windows, it doesn't matter if Linux is out there. It is purpose orientated, they will buy what fits their needs for the given task. Sometimes one or the other doesn't work.
You're fighting an old fight. Microsoft successfully outflanked Linux on the desktop using an array of techniques, but mostly just the old standard illegal monopoly control of OEMs. While Microsoft was fixated on that, the rest of the world moved on. Apple slipped in and grabbed a major chunk of the laptop market. First Apple, then Linux took over the handset market. Linux took over the cloud.
The next act in this drama is pretty obvious. Handsets get bigger and become desktops. Except they're not desktops, they have built in microphones and speakers and cameras and even GPS hardware because it would cost more to engineer goodies like that out than just leave them in. And they don't have a big tangle of power cords, it's all bluetooth. And no fans to pollute the sound environment. And touch screens, for what that's worth, besides mouse and keyboard. I've got one of those sitting beside me right now, it's just a stock Android tablet sitting on a media dock. It's very close to displacing this converted windows 8 machine as my main workstation. I can see that happening in the next couple of years, all we need on the software side is slightly improved mouse and keyboard support and on the hardware side, interface to a bigger monitor. While waiting for that, this setup has already displaced my laptop completely for road trips where I'm willing to put up with the small screen, which actually turns into an advantage in terms of doing useful work on an airline dinner tray.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Ha ha, you are so funny :)
-- Fuck Beta
Hello,
While raising the price on an enterprise product is a good way to boost short-term revenue, it seems to me that companies might begin to seek less expensive alternatives. In this case, though, that might not be Linux at all.
I haven't seen any mention of this so far, but I have to wonder if the price increase might be an attempt to make enterprises look at Windows Azure as an alternative to continuing to run their own datacenters.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
GP is absolutely right in what they said.
You try to LOSE money in an expanding market. More on that later. The problem is, Microsoft isn't in an expanding market. Google an Apple are. Microsoft isn't really in that market, the mobile market.
In an expanding market, especially a market where critical mass is so important (think app stores), it's all about market share during the time when the market is doubling every year or so. Remember the search engine wars? There were seven major search engines. The largest was HotBot (Inktomi). Guess how much Hotbot, AltaVista, and Excite have made in the last five years? Google is making billions per quarter because they got controlling market share while the total market was tens of milllions. To get that critical market share during the growth phase, the right move is to spend as much as you can on to gain more market share. If you turned a profit, those profit dollars are dollars you should have spent on marketing, expanding production, or otherwise growing your market share.
But again, though his statement is true, it doesn't apply to Microsoft, unless they actually want to get into mobile. If they want to be a significant player in mobile, they should have spent another $400 million developing something that could compete. That would be a $400M "loss", in exchange for a shot to remain relevant in the consumer market.
Slow down, read what I wrote, and think. Seriously. It doesn't matter what they do with it. The point is that the same product costs more today than it did yesterday. In terms of what it does in comparison to other products, it does the exact same thing as it did yesterday. If you can't understand the point after further consideration then don't quit your day job (I'm assuming you are in the custodial sciences in this case)
[crystal_Balls]
Well I am custodial scientist and I do not take offense. However what is really going on in the enterprise server industry is about to be shaken to its core.
By the end of next year Microsoft will buy out Dell completely. HP and Intel will get together with numerous other partners to produce hardware that blows away everything else in terms of operational costs. Citrix is in on the program along with many others except Microsoft.
There is still a shitload of businesses out there on Server 2008 and WinXP pro desktops in critical businesses. I know this for a fact as I see them and clean their desks at night. My thinking is that WinXP software will be all visualized so that the WinXP desktops will not have to be changed or even upgraded. The new servers will essentially sip power in comparison to the old racks that I see everywhere. So essentially most businesses will consider ditching their old heavy hardware and installing new low power replacements. The chances of them replacing all their desktops when Microsoft obsoletes XP pro are not good this time around. IBM, HP, Intel and all the big players know this and are moving in for the kill.
Microsoft increasing the seat CAL costs is suicide. Paying per processor for site CALS on servers is about to be considered little more than a money losing software pyramid scheme. I have no doubt that most so called ESSENTIAL Windows accounting interfaces will also be replaced this time around. Also IBM is teaming up with Google and Nvidia things are about to get very interesting. Microsoft is running scared and it is about time! [/crystal_Balls]
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
This is an increase in the cost of the Datacenter version, not a comparison of the Datacenter version to non-Datacenter versions, so your point is meaningless.
I have seen hosting providers charging more for a VM running Windows 2012 Datacenter edition than for a VM running Standard edition. US$75 a month more. Given that theres no practical difference between the two VMs thats just robbery. (this is in an environment where you don't get to utilise the multi-VM features of the Datacenter license; you have ONE VM and no access to the host).
I guess they will be able to justify robbing their customers for more now!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Because Datacenter has no limit on the VM's, and with server hardware expanding to easily handle an increasing number of them, the price increase seems to just be reflecting that. Yes, it's arbitrary, but they are running a business. When people are having to buy less than before, for whatever reason, the prices do tend to rise.
What this price increase does, it make it so that you need have something like 15 or more VM's per host to break even (compared to standard edition licensing), rather than the 10 or 12 before. For a company with the hardware capable of running hundreds of VM's per host, Datacenter licensing is still a no-brainer.
MS lost nearly a billion on that (and now their WinRT ads are getting obnoxiously frequent as they try to hock their stock).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Remember that Midori thing MS said a few years ago? Yeah me too, they said it will come into play when Windows is dying....
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
We do some high-level support for Adobe products. We run Adobe software almost exclusively to provide support, maybe 15 times a year for a few minutes each time. $600 per year is NOT cheaper. We will help organizations move to other software.
Does anyone, anywhere actually like their ERP system? *boggle* The point is, server licensing is a small piece of the pie, and stuff like ERP retraining cost would be a rather larger piece.
Just in general, if your IT works well enough that it's not a major source of pain for whatever your business actually does, it's very hard to justify any sort of major change. That's why 1970s mainframe software was still quite popular until the Y2K costs hit - it may not be perfect, but it's OK and we're used to it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Bad News: Lincense to Kill. Good News: there are alternatives!
It's just not that easy to move your apps from Windows to Linux and in the outsourcing space, customers don't want to hear it - they aren't interested in data center operations costs until it's time to renegotiate their contracts. The cost of migrating is generally higher than the cost of licensing especially when you factor in all the related and linked apps like Sharepoint, AD and so on. What customers will do is scream at service providers to squeeze more performance out of bigger hardware instead.
They should have waited till they had more of their customer base tied into Office 365, and then raised prices. As it is, many companies I know are wavering between going with an all Microsoft future (along with 365), or going with a mixed Linux/MS environment. This will make that decision easier.
On the hosting side of things, data centers never purchase Microsoft Server licenses outright, as the actual instances of Windows Server are run by clients. Therefore, the only way to be compliant with Microsoft's terms is to offer licensing under the SPLA program, which offers licensing Microsoft Software for a monthly cost. Also, with Windows Server 2012, they have gotten rid of Windows Server Enterprise, and there is now only really Windows Server Standard and Windows Server Data Center, which is functionally identical software. The only difference is that Standard allows for up to two instances on the same hardware, whereas Data Center Edition allows for unlimited instances on the same hardware. However, you need licenses for each physical processor. You can just add on additional Standard licenses until the Data Center Edition pricing makes sense. Perhaps one of the reason they're raising prices, is that with the increases in processing power per server, unlimited instances result in far many more virtuals now than before.
http://astutehosting.com/
So you are saying that they added functionality that should have been there from the start, and that's worth more money. Enjoy your M$ garbage.*
I have significant Windows Server and Linux sysadmin experience, ergo I far prefer Linux
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
ATI drivers? Desktops ? People here are talking about servers. Learn what servers are, try to keep up with the discussion before jumping in.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.