This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Microsoft raises license fees 15% - What does it mean to you?

This week Microsoft dropped a bomb on small business - a 15% price jump on some licenses. Here's how to minimize its impact on your business.

This week Microsoft announced a hefty 15% jump in client access license (CAL) fees for a number of  their commonly used products including Windows Server and Exchange Email.   These increases are scheduled to go into effect on December 1st.  According to Microsoft the change is due to the growing number of mobile devices becoming part of every day business.

As a small business owner with less than a week’s notice how can you minimize the impact of these fees?

First – The licenses you already own won’t change although your maintenance costs (Software Assurance) will increase at your renewal.   Same holds true if you have set pricing and discounting in an existing volume agreement like Open Value – those prices will hold through the remainder of your agreement or subscription.

Find out what's happening in Half Hollow Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

May seem simple, but when was your last software inventory?   Most companies I’ve visited still have at least one former employee still listed in their directory, and still costing the company license fees.   Check it out & reuse instead of buying more.

Next you really need to take an inventory of how your company uses Microsoft products?   Do multiple people share one computer like at a receptionists desk?  Or does your staff work from multiple PCs or maybe even a mobile device?   If the latter – save money by purchasing a single user CAL for all devices that person uses…   Shared PCs – buy a device CAL.

Find out what's happening in Half Hollow Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Finally – For some products – look at the alternative in either Hosted platforms (Microsoft 365 or Google Apps for example) and even free open source.   Free isn’t always the right answer for your business, but you owe it to yourself to consider.

So summing it all up – you have lots of options, do your homework and do what’s right for your business.

 

Products affected by December 1, 2012 increase:

  • Bing Maps Server CAL
  • Core CAL Suite
  • Enterprise CAL Suite
  • Exchange Server Standard and Enterprise CALs
  • Lync Server Standard and Enterprise CALs
  • Project Server CAL
  • SharePoint Server Standard and Enterprise CALs
  • System Center 2012 Client Management Suite
  • System Center Configuration Manager
  • System Center Endpoint Protection
  • Visual Studio TFS CAL
  • Windows Multipoint Server CAL
  • Windows Server CAL
  • Windows Server RDS, RMS, Terminal Services CAL

 

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?