Microsoft announces price increases from March 2022

Microsoft have announced changes to their commercial pricing for various products.

Microsoft has advised that "this updated pricing reflects the increased value they have delivered to their customers

and innovations they’ve delivered over the past decade in three key areas—communications and collaboration, security and compliance, and

AI and automation—as well as the addition of audio conferencing capabilities".

1. Communication and collaboration. Mi

crosoft Teams is the new front end across work, life, and learning for more than 250 million monthly active users. Teams was launched in 2017 as the only integrated solution where users can meet, chat, call, collaborate, and automate business processes—with the power of the Office apps—all within the flow of work. In 2020 alone over 300 new capabilities were released, including Together mode, background effects, large gallery view, raise hand, live reactions, breakout rooms, live captions with speaker attribution, and Fluid components, just to name a few.

A new category of collaborative applications was introduced in Teams, empowering people and organizations for hybrid work through deep integrations with Power Platform, Whiteboard, Lists, Planner, Shifts, Forms, and SharePoint.

2. Security and compliance. The cybersecurity landscape is more complex than ever. With the accelerating volume, sophistication, and scale of cyberattacks, security and compliance are a priority for every organization. Microsoft have added new attack surface reduction capabilities to help organizations defend against ransomware and other threats. They have added capabilities like data loss prevention (DLP) for email and documents, sensitivity labels, and message encryption to help keep

important data within the organization. And they have added powerful compliance capabilities that help organizations reduce risk and respond to increasing regulatory requirements such as Content Search, eDiscovery, and core Litigation Hold. Built-in mobile device management (MDM) and other management tools like Microsoft Endpoint Manager help admins support remote and hybrid workforces.

3. AI and automation. Over the past decade, MS have infused AI capabilities across their productivity and collaboration applications to help everyone achieve more. Across Microsoft 365, they have introduced AI-powered innovations to help users be better writers, designers, and presenters. Cloud-powered AI now automatically creates maps, charts, and tables in Excel, and sorts email and removes clutter in Outlook. AI-powered real-time translation, captions, and transcription make collaboration and communication more accessible and engaging for everyone.

Extending audio conferencing capabilities

Microsoft have announced that they will add unlimited dial-in capabilities for Microsoft Teams meetings across the enterprise, business, frontline, and government suites over the next few months. Even as cloud connectivity increases, it is known that people join Teams meetings while they are on the go or struggling with a bad internet connection. Currently included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5, they have come to see dial-in as an important part of the complete Teams experience. Available with

subscriptions in over 70 countries and with interactive support in 44 languages and dialects, unlimited dial-in provides peace of mind that users will be able to join their Microsoft Teams meeting from virtually any device regardless of location.

New pricing

The pricing changes announced by Microsoft will go into effect on March 1, 2022. These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions

This will have a direct impact on some elements of the Cloudsis Cloud subscription pricing that will reflect in the March 2022 invoice.

Cloudsis clients will notice a small increase for the following commercial products:

• Windows Server: +£2

• Apps users: +£2

• Full desktop users (including MS Office): +£5

• Additional resources (space, memory, extra cores…): Unchanged

• Cloud Email archiver services: Unchanged

• VOIP services: Unchanged

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: +£0.5

• Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise: +£2

• Office 365 E1: +£2

• Office 365 E3: +£3

• Office 365 E5: +£4

• Microsoft Office 2019: +£2

• SQL licences: unchanged

If you have any questions about the new prices that will be applied to your system from March 2022 please do not hesitate to contact us at info@cloudsis.com