Microsoft Raising Prices For Office 2019 And Windows 10 Enterprise

Microsoft is increasing prices for on-premises Office with the launch of the next version, Office 2019, later this year, the company announced.

With new Microsoft pricing that starts Oct. 1, the commercial version of Office 2019 will rise by 10 percent compared to the current pricing for on-premises Office.

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The price increase applies to Office client, Client Access License (Enterprise and Core) and server products, Microsoft said in a blog post. The company did not mention any plans for an Office 365 price hike.

The pricing changes "provide yet another incentive for customers to move from legacy purchasing and distribution mechanisms to more modern licenses and technologies," said Reed Wiedower, CTO of Washington, D.C.-based New Signature, in an email to CRN.

"Many of our customers have already, in bulk, moved away from older MSI based versions of office to click-to-run, simply to ease their administrative burden," he said. "That also enables firms to use Intune as an app deployment mechanism instead of a more traditional approach."

A major technology change made in concert with these licensing choices is the new MSIX installer format, "which will provide another reason for folks to go back and re-package older apps into the new format for distribution," Wiedower said.

"The 10 percent cost increase certainly is going to be a kick in the pants for customers who continue to avoid the cloud – and since our business is built upon helping customers move to the cloud and live in the cloud, we view it as uniformly positive," he said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft also disclosed in its blog post that changes are coming as of Oct. 1 for Windows 10 Enterprise users, as well.

Firstly, Windows 10 Enterprise E3 will now only refer to the per-user offer of Windows 10 for enterprise.

The per-device offer, meanwhile, will simply be referred to as Windows 10 Enterprise starting in October.

Additionally, at that time, Windows 10 Enterprise (the per-device offer) will see an increase in price so that it costs the same as Windows 10 Enterprise E3, which is $84 per user annually.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company is not specifying the size of the price increase for the per-device offer, or whether Office 365 and the Microsoft 365 suite--which includes Office 365 and Windows 10--will see a price increase in October.

Lastly, Microsoft announced that its per-device offer for Windows 10 Enterprise E5 will be discontinued as of Oct. 1.

"These changes will highlight the benefits of our pricing for a cloud-first world, help us move from program-centric to a customer-centric pricing structure, and create more consistency and transparency across our purchasing channels," Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said in the blog post.