The new year often brings new changes, and Microsoft is implementing some of its own. This year, the digital productivity powerhouse will be making changes to the way the company offers subscriptions along with a commercial price increase, the first substantial increase the company has made in over a decade. In recent times, inflation and price increases are nothing new, but we wanted to take the time to address these changes and how they will affect our Anteris Clients.
What happened?
There are two main changes going into effect: the commercial price increase and the premium on monthly subscriptions.
Microsoft has had a decade of innovation and attributes the price increase to the increase in its value. Since introducing Microsoft 365 four years ago, they have continued to add new apps and features over three key areas:
- Communication and collaboration. The release of Microsoft Teams allowed users to meet, call, chat, and collaborate while integrating with the Office apps we already knew so well. Microsoft Teams has continued to grow with the implementation of new capabilities such as background effects, live reactions, and breakout rooms. In addition, companies such as Adobe, Salesforce, and Workday have built apps that integrate with Teams. Microsoft also continued to grow its collaboration, both in synchronous and asynchronous areas. With these innovations, there is now real-time collaboration in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint desktop apps. Updates to @mentions, assign tasks, comments, and auto-save allow users to stay connected even in remote workspaces. The addition and expansion of Microsoft OneDrive has also been a beneficial development for all workforces.
- Security and compliance. In the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape, Microsoft has added capabilities like data loss prevention for emails and documents, sensitivity labels, and message encryption. In addition, they have also added compliance capabilities to respond to increasing regulatory requirements such as Content Search, eDiscovery, and core Litigation Hold. Once again, in response to the growing amount of remote and hybrid workforces, Microsoft has added built-in mobile device management and other additional tools.
- AI and Automation. AI-powered innovations such as cloud-powered AI automatically creates maps, charts, and tables in Excel. In Microsoft Outlook, emails are automatically sorted and clutter removed. AI-powered real-time translation, captions, and transcription make Microsoft 365 accessible for all.
In addition to the price increase, Microsoft has also announced unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings in their enterprise, business, frontline, and government suites.
What this means for you
No matter what, Microsoft pricing is increasing. The price increase will go into effect on March 1, 2022, whether your subscriptions are housed through a managed service provider (MSP) such as Anteris or you’ve purchased directly through Microsoft. The price increases will impact the following commercial products: Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Office 365 E1, Office 365 E3, Office 365 E5, and Microsoft 365 E3 with increases ranging between 10-20% on average. There are no changes to education, non-profit, or consumer product pricing at this time.
In addition, customers who remain on a month-to-month subscription will pay a premium. To avoid the premium, users must sign an annual contract but will retain the ability to pay that contract monthly.
How can Anteris help?
Microsoft will continue to be a valuable asset to many of our customers in the years to come. One of the benefits of an MSP is subscription management. As your IT Partner, we want to help you find the plan that best works for your company. At Anteris, we will take the stress out of figuring out the best way to navigate these changes. Schedule a meeting to update your Microsoft licensing preferences by February 25th and lock in the current pricing until 2023.