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Office 2019 price increase, less bang for your buck

Microsoft has announced a 10% price increase for the Office 2019 commercial / volume licences.  Sorry, it’s not an increase it’s a ‘price adjustment’ <sigh>.

Office 2019 client, Enterprise CAL, Core CAL, and Office 2019 server products are all up 10% from 1 October 2018.   These are all single-payment / perpetual licence products instead of software rental like Office 365.

The price increase doesn’t apply, as yet, to the consumer version of Office 2019. Office 2019 for Windows and Mac is in preview with no release date nor individual pricing yet announced.

What’s in Office 2019 and when

Microsoft will continue forcing customers to Office 365: report

More money, less support

Not mention in the pricing announcement is that Microsoft is charging 10% more for Office 2019 while providing LESS support.

The company had already announced that Office 2019 will get only 7 years of support.  Instead of 10 years according to Microsoft’s own ‘fixed’ support policy.

The software Microsoft does NOT want you to buy

All these Office 2019 announcements (higher price, Win10 only, less support, less features) prove what we’ve been saying all year – Microsoft doesn’t want people to buy Office 2019.

Microsoft wants all customers, volume and individual to pay annual fees for their software.  Office 2019 is only being offered because there’s a significant group of organizations unwilling to move to software rental with annual fees.

In an unsubtle effort to change customers over to annual license fees, Microsoft is making Office 2019 as unappealing as possible.

Straightforward?  Consistent?

This is all part of Microsoft’s Modern Commerce branding for volume licences.  Modern Commerce has a ‘vision’ of being “straightforward” and “provide customers with a consistent set of offers.”

Here’s examples of Microsoft’s ‘straightforward’ and ‘consistent’ vision in action …..

Other October changes

October pricing changes include:

  • Establishing a single, consistent starting price across all programs aligned to web direct for online services (OLS)
  • Removing the programmatic volume discounts (Level A and Open Level C) in Enterprise Agreement (EA)/EA Subscription, MPSA, Select/ Select Plus, and Open programs (Open, Open Value, Open Value Subscription)
  • Aligning government pricing for on-premises and online services to the lowest commercial price in EA/EAS, MPSA, Select Plus, and Open Programs
  • Delivering a newly designed Customer Price Sheet that better outlines how a customer’s price was derived (direct EA/EAS only)

Windows 10 Enterprise E3

Windows 10 Enterprise E3 offers will be renamed:

  • E3 will now refer to the per user offer only- Windows 10 Enterprise E3 per User becomes Windows 10 Enterprise E3
  • Windows 10 Enterprise E3 per Device becomes Windows 10 Enterprise
  • The price of Windows 10 Enterprise will be raised to match the price of Windows 10 Enterprise E3
  • Windows 10 Enterprise E5 per device will be discontinued

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