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Eurozone death spiral forces Microsoft to ease UK licensing price hike

Somewhat smaller pillow for Brit customers to bite

Microsoft has confirmed that the pending price hike on volume licensing will not be as steep as the initial preview indicated due to the weakening of the Euro currency in recent weeks.

At the start of last month, Redmond said it expected UK biz customers would pay between 7.5 per cent and 33.5 per cent more for software licensing programmes (an average rise of 29 per cent) when it aligns EU pricing to the Euro from 1 July.

But only this week, partners revealed they were expecting further price moves due to the economic instability across Europe amid fears of Greece defaulting on its bailout conditions and exiting the single currency.

A Microsoft mouthpiece today confirmed, "we have made additional minor adjustments to UK prices that factor in recent exchange rates. We are now able to make smaller price changes than those previewed a month ago.

The final UK list price will now increase by between 1.7 per cent and 25.9 per cent depending on the licensing programme chosen.

The Reg can reveal Open Classic licenses will rise by 1.7 per cent rather than the 7.5 per initially previewed. Open Value/ Subscriptions, SPLA and ISV corporate licenses will go up by 25.9 per cent rather than 33.4 per cent.

Select/ Select Plus corporate licenses will climb 17.7 per cent instead of 24.6 per cent and Enterprise Agreements/ Subscriptions will go up by 18.7 per cent rather than 26.7 per cent.

"Moving forward our goal is to maintain price consistency across Europe, while balancing it with our partners' requirements for pricing stability," a Microsoft bod added, somewhat elliptically.

Sources claim Microsoft will actually lock the pricing for a year from 1 July but questioned why the vendor did not go one step further and align EU prices to the US.

"I can only come to one conclusion, that Microsoft is making more money out of European customers. Not one partner I've spoken buys the justification Microsoft has given that it wants pricing consistency across Europe," said one reseller partner.

As revealed yesterday, the public sector will pay just one per cent more for licenses from 1 July when PSA12 kicks in. ®

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