back to article Microsoft's touching Xmas gift for Brits: MORE licensing price hikes

Microsoft has wrapped up a bunch of pre-Chrimbo licensing price hikes for channel partners to deliver to customers at the start of next month. Redmond handed out a summer treat by bumping up volume licences for UK firms from 1 July as it aligned pricing to the Euro. These rises ranged from 1.7 per cent for Open Classic to 25.9 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No Price Rise For Linux

    It's still free, just make sure your MS salesman knows this.

    1. The BigYin
      Linux

      Re: No Price Rise For Linux

      Infrastructures still costs.

      Support still costs.

      Training still costs.

      Migration will cost (assuming suitable alternative application can be found for those that are MS only).

      I love me some GNU/Linux, but to call it "free" at the enterprise scale is rather misleading. "Much less likely you bend over and scream 'Squeal, piggeh!" is accurate though.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No Price Rise For Linux

        All of the above still apply to MS, when licensing costs become a significant chunk of your annual IT spend then open-source has to be seriously looked at.

        1. The BigYin

          Re: No Price Rise For Linux

          I'm not saying that open-source shouldn't be looked at seriously, I'm just pointing out that "free" is setting expectations too high. Also, the final item on my list, might make any savings in licensing costs moot.

          If you are starting out new, and some says "Hey! Let's use IIS and SQL Server!" Unless there are some very good reasons for those (e.g. you entire company's skill-set is MS only) then you should take that person and beat them to a pulp. This is the perfect situation to go F/OSS.

        2. Khaptain Silver badge

          Re: No Price Rise For Linux

          Licencing costs are only part of the equation and can never be judged on their own.

          Support, userbase, usability, industry standards, shelf life, customer requirements, in house training and knowledge, staff replacement, hosting, compatibility are to name a few other "thoughts" before using/moving to open source.

          There is a hell of a lot of software within industry that simply has no Open Source alternative or viable solutions.

          If Linux truly presented a solution to business, they would already be using it. Software costs are usually spread out over 3 - 5 year periods and as such are not a very large line in a budget. Staff costs, hardware and projects developement on the other hand can really blow a budget to pieces.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: No Price Rise For Linux

            "If Linux truly presented a solution to business, they would already be using it"

            You sound like someone who does just desk PC support or just plays games. What the hell do you think a majority of corporate servers run these days doing the virtualization, webserver etc ?

            1. Khaptain Silver badge
              Stop

              Re: No Price Rise For Linux

              We have in the region of 256 servers within the data centre and anywhere between 10 and 60 servers in the satellites offices spread throughout the world.

              Take a guess which OS is not all of these servers, and no Linux is not one of them....

              You belong to the poor crowd of IT that still believes that Microsoft is incapable of creating a decent server OS or DB, sorry to inform you but you are wrong.

              On top of that I wont even bother to mention the number of desktops within our organisation and again Linux is on none of them. We are not a dedicated MS house it's just that they provide the tools and OS that get the job done in relation to our requirements.

              Your belief in what can't be done will definately limit your capacity to what can be done......

              I will repeat that the cost of the Software is nothing compared to all of the other elements that must be factored in ......

              1. AlbertH
                Linux

                Re: No Price Rise For Linux

                I will repeat that the cost of the Software is nothing compared to all of the other elements that must be factored in ......

                Unfortunately for MS and MS-centric support organisations, in EVERY instance, Linux always works out to be significantly cheaper than the proprietary options. MS simply cannot make a truly scaleable server, they tack "security" on as an ill-conceived afterthought, and they do not provide any real support (except for imprecations to re-install at the slightest sign of trouble).

                MS don't actually have any truly viable products for business any more - Windows 8 is a computer game, Windows 7 is XP with a different desktop (and all the same problems), SQL Server doesn't scale, Windows Server is a Swiss Cheese when it comes to security, IIS still isn't standards compliant, and Office now insists on all filetypes being derivatives of XML...

                I'm so glad I sold all my MS stock a few years ago!

                1. Khaptain Silver badge

                  Re: No Price Rise For Linux

                  @AlbertH

                  I can agree with some of what you are saying but reading this and some of the other comments I would like to know how and why you think

                  linux admins are free or cheap : wrong ( All staff cost money)

                  linux admins do not need training : wrong ( we all need training and it all costs money)

                  linux sytems need to be updated : correct ( Yes Linux systems need to be updated like all other systems in the world and systems updates cost money.).

                  Linux has no bugs : wrong ( The kernel might be relatively bug free but all software has bugs and bugs cost money to fix)

                  Linux has not security problems : wrong ( All systems have security problems and most of them come from the inside and yes, they also cost a lot of money.)

                  Linux desktops offer the same of more than MS for free: Wrong ( The users still need training and MS are an industry standard, Linux has no real standards, there are various flavors of the day but that can change real quick in the Linux world. Ubuntu is popular today, it might be Mint tommorrow. Libre office today, Star office tommorrow, Gnome today, KDE tommorrow- Companies can't afford to keep up to date with the bleeding edge. .

                  I am not saying that MS is any better than Linux or vice versa, both have their qualities, what I am saying is that both systems cost money. Redhat Enterprise support is not free, and we are beginning to see more and more Linux houses requiring funds, these funds have to be paid for by someone, and it almost always means that the corporates will be doing the paying.

                  Linux is an alternative system but it is not free......

                  I have been "playing " with various Linux distros for about 20 years or so now, my first distro was Yggdrasil. I know of the advantages and disadvatanges of linux but even after 20 years it still hasn't produced a decent desktop and thats where the real test lies. There are probably 30 or 40 end users for every server, if you want to make an impact you have got to grab the Desktop market not the server market......

                  ( PS: I don't count Android as Linux because only Google can make any real changes which is a shame because it is the best Linux distro out there..........)

                  <End of Rant>

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: No Price Rise For Linux

                  Nice troll, young Albert!

                  Linux's problem is that licensing costs rarely fall much unless all ms software is eradicated, which is an extremely long term and expensive project - not one most businesses will undertake.

                  However, I think asterisk for lync might be a reasonable plan. Sharepoint is an abomination. LibreOffice is probably ok for most people and worth weaning most people off most of MS Office, though visio is harder to replace. There will be difficulties, but the costs of converting macros are probably worth it. It also gives a chance to rebase critical apps into proper DB's if required.

                  SQL server is generally a backend system and can be left alone without too many licensing issues. Exchange is the biggie for large corps which require delegation of responsibility in calendaring. Fileserving is less of an issue as these are mostly non-windows appliances these days.

                  I have to agree that licensing is often not too much of an issue - change is far more expensive. I wouldn't move purely as a tactical cost reduction, but strategically its probably worthwhile for small and large organisations. Messy middle-sized orgs are the hardest to move. Probably more important than licensing is the pool of linux talent is probably more likely to be (a) enthusiastic about their jobs and (b) schooled in enterprise thinking, coming from a *nix background, which will probably help stability.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They can do what they like when they know full well that they have most CTOs by the short and curlies!

  3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    Trying to meet Wall Street expectations?

    Looks like they want to try to close some additional sales before the end of the year and damn 2013.

  4. Tyrion
    Linux

    In the long term

    GNU/Linux and FOSS can save companies a fortune. The problem is that many of the IT staff and people making the decisions have built their careers on Microsoft software so naturally they fear obsolescence, and are intransigent towards change of the status quo. I've seen it first hand.

    Things are slowly changing though. Having governments dictating free software policies from the very top forces staff on the ground to change their attitudes or go look for a new job. I'm optimistic that this government-led change will affect private industry procurement policy too.

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