Microsoft jacks up Aussie Azure cloud prices by 26 percent

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blog Australia might be ploughing ahead at full speed into the cloud computing revolution, but not everything in the new paradigm is going to be good news for customers. The Financial Review revealed earlier this month in a little-reported tale that Microsoft had hiked the price of access to its local Azure infrastructure by a whopping 26 percent. The newspaper reports (we recommend you click here for the full article):

“A company spokesperson said that the company policy was to “periodically assess our pricing to ensure there is reasonable alignment with the market,” and confirmed the Australian price rises took effect on Saturday.”

I’m in two minds about this kind of price rise. On the one hand, of course Microsoft needs to respond to currency fluctuations and has the right to change its prices as the cloud computing market changes. However, there is also a certain element of power here that the company is flexing. It’s difficult for corporates — extremely difficult — to migrate off Microsoft’s ecosystem once they’re on. Redmond needs to be extremely sensitive with the way that it handles these kind of price changes, lest it face the sort of customer revolt that similar companies such as Oracle have suffered through in the past.

Personally, I’d suggest that 10 percent is a figure chief financial officers can understand in this context. But 26 percent is likely enough to raise more than a few eyebrows. At the very least, I hope Microsoft gave customers a significant amount of notice regarding this increase.

Image credit: Microsoft

4 COMMENTS

  1. Certainly at a time when AWS seems intent on driving it’s costs ever downward, you do have to wonder what on earth MS is playing at here..

    • That said, AWS is in USD. So the exposure is fully taken on (and also should be fully understood by businesses using AWS).

  2. An email was sent out on 1st July to Pay as you Go customers for the 26% increase which would take effect on 1st August. Enterprise Agreement customers weren’t affected as their price is locked.

  3. Cisco does this sort of thing all the time, every year or so I get emails saying “Order now before Cisco raises their prices by 9% across the board!”

    The question is, will Microsoft drop prices when the AU$ rises?

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