Microsoft is raising the price of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 commercial packages. These new prices will be effective March 1, 2022. Consumer and education offerings and the E5 SKU are not impacted with this announcement. Increased range from $12 per user per year on Business Basic to $48 per user per year on E3. Analysts believe the move could be a $5 billion dollar windfall for the company.
While on Microsoft, the company has released guidance on securing Windows 365 Cloud PCs. The list includes limiting local administrator rights, security baselines using Endpoint Manager, and Azure AD conditional access, including multifactor authentication.
Why do we care?
Of course they are raising the price. That’s to be expected. One of the key lessons for any subscription price is to periodically review the price and ensure it’s priced to the market. Additionally, regularly adjusting pricing is normal – and many IT providers don’t do it often enough.
Any provider considering bemoaning this should be taking this opportunity to consider their own approach to price increases. Microsoft is positioning re-bundling – the offer of more products in the suite – as a way to charge more. That’s a natural way to raise prices.