Microsoft Azure prices increased; United Kingdom unaffected

“Effective August 1, 2015, local prices for Azure and Azure Marketplace in Australian dollars will increase by 26 per cent to more closely align with prices in most markets”.

But the e-mail message also said customers or partners who had purchased Azure through enterprise agreements, enterprise subscription agreements, or server and cloud enrolments “have price protection on now offered Azure services and will receive the better of their baseline price or the new market price”.

“Microsoft is committed to sharing pricing and licensing updates with our partners to ensure they and our customers are prepared and able to evaluate their options”.

Microsoft has data centres in the USA, Europe, South East Asia, Australia and South America delivering the Azure cloud computing platform and other services. However, V3 understands that it is set to affect the Euro zone and Australia. Blogger Aidan Finn has since obtained a similar email sent out to customers in the Eurozone, which tells them to expect an 11 percent price hike in the near future.

“The changes will not affect existing annuity volume licensing agreements but will apply to most enterprise cloud products under new or renewing contracts.”

Microsoft is blaming currency exchange rates for the price rise, noted the report. The Euro also has its problems, as anyone familiar with the Greek debt crisis will be keenly aware of.

For at least the past couple of years, Microsoft has aimed to be competitive on price against rival public cloud operators such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google across every region. In the past it’s usually been the case that as soon as one of the “big three” vendors adjusts their prices, the other two quickly follow suit. A resurgent United States economy has helped to drive the Aussie Dollar’s buying power down to 74 United States cents.

The rate increase comes at a time when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is placing renewed focus on the cloud as part of his “cloud first, mobile first” strategy.