Microsoft Will Squeeze Datacenters On Price of Windows Server 274
Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft plans to raise the price of the Datacenter edition of the upcoming R2 release of Windows Server 2012 by 28 percent, adding to what analysts call a record number of price increases for enterprise software products from Redmond. According to licensing data sheets available for download from the Windows Server 2012 R2 Website (PDF), the price of a single license of Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter will be $6,155, compared to $4,809 today—plus the cost of a Client Access Licenses for every user or device connecting to the server. News of the increase was posted yesterday by datacenter virtualization and security specialist Aidan Finn, a six-time Microsoft MVP who works for Dublin-based value added reseller MicroWarehouse Ltd. and has done work for clients including Amdahl, Fujitsu and Barclays. The increase caps off a year filled with a record number of price increases for Microsoft enterprise software, according to a Tweet yesterday from Microsoft software licensing analyst Paul DeGroot of Pica Communications."
Fine with me (Score:5, Insightful)
RedHat should see a nice increase in business because of this.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fine with me (Score:5, Funny)
Actually the guys at the FSF along with the major Linux players like Red hat and Canonical really should get together and bake a really nice cake for Steve Ballmer, because he is singlehandedly doing what Linux never could, completely destroying MSFT and killing Windows. From the "LULZ HAI I'm a cellphone, seen my appstore?" Windows 8 debacle to jacking the price of both home and server versions of Windows in a dead economy to burning Xbox with his retarded "hey lets bleed the gamers for more cash!" scheme, his pathetic leadership and Dilbert PHB obsession with Apple and the stock price is completely trashing the company.
Is anyone good at drawing a flying chair in cake frosting?
Just more boots dropping as Microsoft try to maintain their revenue stream with the plateauing of Windows. They'll be a bit player in the tablet and mobile market, so the money to keep the stockholders happy has to come from somewhere and Server market is as likely as Office.
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Is anyone good at drawing a flying chair in cake frosting?
There's a printer for that:
http://www.sugarcraft.com/catalog/airbrush/kopyjetsystem.htm [sugarcraft.com]
It would be great to get a frame grab from the video and use it...
Software companies can be extremely abusive. (Score:3, Interesting)
Adobe is doing the same thing: Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only. [cnet.com] You will no longer be allowed to have Adobe CS software on your own computer. NSA magnet, and far more expensive. As you are designing a new web site, the NSA will be viewing what you are doing. Or, of course, people who work for Adobe.
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Adobe is doing the same thing: Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only. [cnet.com] You will no longer be allowed to have Adobe CS software on your own computer. NSA magnet, and far more expensive. As you are designing a new web site, the NSA will be viewing what you are doing. Or, of course, people who work for Adobe.
Completely wrong. You still download and run the software on your PC or Mac. There is no online software. You get some online storage that you can use, if you wish. The only difference between this and CS6 is that you pay by the month or by the year for a license. Sucks for individuals/small shops but it's a good thing for many at larger companies since it makes it easier to get updates. Due to accounting voodoo many companies use, it's easier to get the company to pay a yearly maintenance fee than it is t
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> Before upgrading the creative suite every year cost between $1300 and $1800,
Except you weren't forced to do that. Totally bogus comparison from a shill.
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It's *hugely* cheaper to do things their new way. Before upgrading the creative suite every year cost between $1300 and $1800, and to boot you didn't get everything.
Only if you're on the cutting edge, getting the new version every single year, and on top of that, getting the whole suite. Otherwise it's more expensive this way.
Most people don't fit into this category, and they're going to pay more over time.
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haha I would love to see them send a Cake with a big Tux logo on it; I'd even pitch in for the costs. Or a dozen Cupcakes with Tux. But honestly, we all know they are doing this because of the losses on the consumer side. Companies have to make up for the losses in other areas, like what the Credit Card companies are doing to some of us now with bs transaction fees and interest since the new laws kicked in.
Re:Fine with me (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the guys at the FSF along with the major Linux players like Red hat and Canonical really should get together and bake a really nice cake for Steve Ballmer, because he is singlehandedly doing what Linux never could, completely destroying MSFT and killing Windows. From the "LULZ HAI I'm a cellphone, seen my appstore?" Windows 8 debacle to jacking the price of both home and server versions of Windows in a dead economy to burning Xbox with his retarded "hey lets bleed the gamers for more cash!" scheme, his pathetic leadership and Dilbert PHB obsession with Apple and the stock price is completely trashing the company.
So you mean this is why Microsoft's net income has basically TRIPLED over the last 10 years?
Re:Fine with me (Score:5, Interesting)
So you mean this is why Microsoft's net income has basically TRIPLED over the last 10 years?
Profit isn't really the best measurement of the success of a company in an expanding industry. Even if your profit increased, if over the same period you've lost market share, you've essentially failed. Not that I have any clue what MS market share looks like over the last 10 years; you still might be correct.
Re:Fine with me (Score:4, Insightful)
So you mean this is why Microsoft's net income has basically TRIPLED over the last 10 years?
Profit isn't really the best measurement of the success of a company in an expanding industry. Even if your profit increased, if over the same period you've lost market share, you've essentially failed. Not that I have any clue what MS market share looks like over the last 10 years; you still might be correct.
Son, please tell me you do not work for a for profit company?
Re: Fine with me (Score:4, Interesting)
Car analogy (Score:2, Interesting)
Son, please tell me you do not work for a for profit company?
Let me explain it for you. Lets say there is a race and the MS Soapbox Express is hurtling along faster and faster every moment. Sounds like they are doing really well. Problem is that the race is on a downward sloping hill and everyone else brought engines. The fate of our beloved soapbox racer is suddenly not looking good.
Now, son, do you understand how increasing profit is irrelevant to the measure of success if not compared to the competition in a growing market?
in a growing market, you want to lose money. (Score:5, Insightful)
You try to LOSE money in an expanding market. More on that later. The problem is, Microsoft isn't in an expanding market. Google an Apple are. Microsoft isn't really in that market, the mobile market.
In an expanding market, especially a market where critical mass is so important (think app stores), it's all about market share during the time when the market is doubling every year or so. Remember the search engine wars? There were seven major search engines. The largest was HotBot (Inktomi). Guess how much Hotbot, AltaVista, and Excite have made in the last five years? Google is making billions per quarter because they got controlling market share while the total market was tens of milllions. To get that critical market share during the growth phase, the right move is to spend as much as you can on to gain more market share. If you turned a profit, those profit dollars are dollars you should have spent on marketing, expanding production, or otherwise growing your market share.
But again, though his statement is true, it doesn't apply to Microsoft, unless they actually want to get into mobile. If they want to be a significant player in mobile, they should have spent another $400 million developing something that could compete. That would be a $400M "loss", in exchange for a shot to remain relevant in the consumer market.
Re:Fine with me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Selling more stuff can never make more profit? That's an interesting economic claim you have there.
It [wikipedia.org] might [wikipedia.org], it might not. Google and Red Hat both make nice profits with free products.
Re: Fine with me (Score:3)
Growing market share does lead to increased shareholder returns all other things being equal. What I never said was that market share should be increased at any cost.
I am attempting to point out that there are many complicated factors in determining whether a specific policy or action is a success. Nothing more, nothing less. Or do you disagree that growing by 5% when all of your competitors grow by 10% is a failure? It is not a dismal failure, but it is by no means a success.
Google up 100X, Apple up 586X, Microsoft 2X (Score:3)
In that same ten years, Google's profit actually HAS increased 100X and Apple's up 586X over the same period.
So the the score is:
Microsoft 2.2
Google 100.0
Apple 586.0
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Netcraft.com shows the opposite for the past 5 years actually.
IIS is gaining popularity as Windows is replacing Unix. Linux is stagnant the last time I looked. With MS CRM the lockin is actually increasing and many 3rd party products link to SQL Server rather than Oralce now requiring more Windows Servers.
Help desk ticking systems to backups for MS Access databases are driving this.
Who knew... (Score:2)
There is a significant install base of Windows in datacenters? Who knew...
Re:Who knew... (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a significant install base of Windows in datacenters? Who knew...
Every fortune 500 company?
Once you get away from internet and other tech companies, Windows has a *huge* back office presence.
Once you make the investment into Windows to run your back office, there's not much incremental cost to add servers here and there to do other things, it's not worth the investment to switch to Linux for a few servers, and then as "a few servers here and there" grow to hundreds of servers running mission critical tasks, it's even harder to move away from Windows. Microsoft is good at lock-in -- their products work well (mostly) with each other, but poorly with everyone else. So once you move down the Windows path you get more and more ingrained in it. And, just like there are plenty of Linux zealots, there are plenty of Windows zealots that are firmly convinced that Microsoft is the One True Way to get things done in the corporate world - and of course, much of the software that you companies use to use to run their business only runs on Windows.
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It's fine with me because all those smug assholes who were too shortsighted to see this coming from twenty years ago should suffer for their stupidity. And in this day and age, whoever is stupid enough not to be moving forward with a Microsoft exit strategy deserves what is coming to them.
Re: Fine with me (Score:2, Insightful)
Not much in real dollars since you get unlimited virtualization rights with datacenter and with current hardware you can decrease your server count
Re:Fine with me (Score:4, Interesting)
A Microsoft exit strategy is a pretty hard thing to do. It's funny to me because even though ALL of the core infrastructure products my company runs from Cisco Unity phone and voicemail, Cisco's NAC, VMWare to Falconstor and others ALL run Linux, my boss's boss and my boss and his peers have knocked Linux as a toy. We had the option of running our Documentum servers on Linux or Windows and they went with Windows even though Oracle would have fully support Linux. The hit in performance and resources of Windows has resulted in a Documentum collection that just doesn't perform as well as it should or could.
The short of it is that they don't know enough about Linux to want to go with it. The sad reality is that they actually don't know enough about Windows to make a reasonable decision which favors Windows either -- they just expect it to work because everything else is Windows to them... except for the core infrastructure.
That's right... you'll never catch me driving a crappy Toyota car. I'll drive a Lexus any and every day.
Idiots.
Now Microsoft on the desktop is another matter... a lot harder to get away from.
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You mean in this day and age, there are morons who still have executive level jobs that actually like Windows *Server*? I suppose if they really, really hate Oracle they may need it for SQL Server, but that's all I can think of. If you want to argue cost, you can argue for like Red Hat or even CentOS (if they can get over the fact that they aren't paying anyone for support).
And yeah, there will still be AD servers, Desktop support file/print share servers and Sharepoint servers, but you use Linux for ever
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You make a great point... but it just doesn't work that way. At least not where I work now, or the previous places.
Pointy haired bosses get comfortable when things "just work", even if they "just work" inefficiently and create additional maintenance/bugs/breaches. Even when it comes time to "true up" and pay the ludicrous MS taxes, they justify it and you end up supporting it. Each time I found out my superiors have picked "just one more product, we promise" that runs on windows, I die a little inside and f
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The hit in performance and resources of Windows has resulted in a Documentum collection that just doesn't perform as well as it should or could.
Im curious how you measured this, if you havent run it on Linux. I ask because I see a lot of people throw this idea around, but I dont believe Ive seen recent benchmarks showing that.
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It's presumption, more or less. But it is presumption based on the knowledge and experience of dealing with Windows. For every file open, for every TCP session, for every database connection, Windows seems to require a lot more of everything to do the same things. What's more the specs seem to say the same things when it comes to system requirements. For Windows they always recommend more memory and more processor power than for Linux. That can't be because they just like Windows better.
Re:Fine with me (Score:4, Insightful)
That's right... you'll never catch me driving a crappy Toyota car. I'll drive a Lexus any and every day.
Idiots.
Now Microsoft on the desktop is another matter... a lot harder to get away from.
I'm missing the analogy. Lexus is a re-badged and gussied up Toyota. And both are reliable cars.
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Sorry. The point is that people don't know what they're buying when they buy it. They just buy brand names.
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It's fine with me because all those smug assholes who were too shortsighted to see this coming from twenty years ago should suffer for their stupidity. And in this day and age, whoever is stupid enough not to be moving forward with a Microsoft exit strategy deserves what is coming to them.
I see Microsoft astromods slithering around.
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Exit strategy? Who exactly are these people who have not exited already?
All the enterprise software runs on some kind of UNIX, all the web hosting is done on Linux or *BSD, all the heavyweight computation is done on Linux.
What server applications still need windows? The only two I can think of are active directory and SQL server, there must be a lot more.
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80% of the clients I work for are all ms shops and the CIO brags how much they save by using one platform and ecosystem for everything.
These are precisely the assholes I like to see squirming as Microsoft turns up the heat.
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by Tough Love (215404)
It's fine with me because all those smug assholes who were too shortsighted to see this coming from twenty years ago should suffer for their stupidity. And in this day and age, whoever is stupid enough not to be moving forward with a Microsoft exit strategy deserves what is coming to them.
Apropos 'nym is apropos.
They'll gladly pay (Score:2)
For most businesses, even small businesses, the issue isn't the cost of Windows Datacenter licenses and CALs. They pay far more for people to administer the thing. One fully loaded dual-socket server can serve an armada of Windows Server instances (any version) with the license included, Linux servers as well, and petabytes of storage. You just need to load up on the RAM and flash storage the instance images are stored on to get around the I/O bottleneck. They're paying more for the software that enable
I'm afraid you've got it backwards. (Score:3, Insightful)
We just left Red Hat - converted the entire datacenter from an OpenLDAP/samba infrastructure on Red Hat 5 & 5 to an AD/windows environment - because Red Hat couldn't (or more acurately wouldn't) meet Microsoft's pricing. The fact that HyperV proved to be fantastically more stable and capable than RHEVM (and RHEVM had Active Directory dependencies) didn't help the situation any, but it was price discrepancy that really did it.
We had to replace hardware anyway, so we priced out new software while we were
Re:Fine with me (Score:5, Interesting)
No.. I don't think Red Hat will see that much, some, but most folks will be heading to Cent-OS if they are Red Hat shops and start feeling the cost pinch too much. My guess is that ALL Linux distributions and vendors will see an uptick in their server installs, starting with the ones that have the latest SAMBA version on the install media.
Where I do like Red Hat's support, it is wildly expensive and overkill for most low end shops who are not trying to push the envelop of the bleeding edge. Cent-OS is by definition the same thing as Red Hat offerings, minus the up-line's copyrighted graphics and trademarks and a whole lot of subscription fees. You might have to wait days, weeks or even months for the latest release, but they eventually come.
The guys that really should be jacking up the prices are the training houses that get paid to convert Windows admins into Linux Admins. THAT'S where the money will be made when Micro$oft starts turning the thumb screws to hard.
Actually... I'm betting Micro$oft has studied this and figures that the increase in fees will offset any defections to Linux they may see going forward. I'd figure that they are likely pretty close to being right and should they see too many folks defecting, they will quickly change the price or do some rebate deal to stop it. Micro$oft won't loose on this deal.. Trust me.
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Centos then...
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If you need 24/7 uptime, these days in most high end commercial and govt server rooms I know of...it is mostly Linux, which supplanted Solaris years back...
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who in their right mind, puts high reliability, crucial work in a server room on freakin' Windows?!?
Me. I would totally do that. And have in the past. To much satisfaction. Especially 2008 r2. It's awesome. (haven't tried 2012 in the enterprise)
Re:Fine with me (Score:4, Informative)
Say you have some vertical market application that only runs on Windows Server.
Yes you as a Linux purist would balk at the idea, but most enterprises have plenty of these apps that some manager spent a ton of money on that they pay you to keep running.
That said - I've got a bunch of Windows servers in my enterprise - they don't have any uptime issues. The most recent outage was causes by the data center UPS exploding (which forced all the circuits onto the remaining two and they shut down - yeah its a nasty wiring/design issue).
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This is what I just love, people who claim they are "stuck" when actually they just don't care. Similar example: "I'm fat because I can't stop eating". There is a special place in hell right here on earth, for those lacking the will to change.
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Um not all ERP systems easily port over. Not all CRM systems go over.
A business is more than just word and excel. the accounting programs both front and back end have to be moved. Systems that only get updates every 5-10 years.
I can't move over. there isn't a compatible ERP system with our business processes and we don't have the cash to spend a couple of million building a complete custom system that will go over budget and still not work.
Software also has to work for the business. updating business pr
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You probably think your Microsoft-based ERP system is really great whereas in fact it is an utter piece of crap that is doing your business more harm than good.
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Who says it is MS CRM or whatever?
Fact of the matter I.T.is there to help them do business. Nothing more and nothing less. They do not care about freedom or what someone says on slashdot. They use software that is made for Windows only to do this. Just because it runs on Windows does not mean it is crap.
It has been said a million times people do not want to be free of Microsoft. Slashdotters who have not run Windows in a decade are unaware it is not based on DOS anymore. It doesn't crash. It is not buggy an
Re:Doubtfull (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone, anywhere actually like their ERP system? *boggle* The point is, server licensing is a small piece of the pie, and stuff like ERP retraining cost would be a rather larger piece.
Just in general, if your IT works well enough that it's not a major source of pain for whatever your business actually does, it's very hard to justify any sort of major change. That's why 1970s mainframe software was still quite popular until the Y2K costs hit - it may not be perfect, but it's OK and we're used to it.
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Don't worry, once you get out of school and get a real job you will understand how things actually work in the world.
Oh, Microsoft.... (Score:5, Funny)
it's almost as if you're trying to get people to use something else.
I'm not that surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
Datacentre allows unlimited virtualization and consolidation ratios are climbing.
We run around 300 Windows VMs on 16 CPUs, that was a major saving over Windows Server Enterprise Licenses.
Still, the pain.
Jason.
Re:I'm not that surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The gain is, "You can only buy R2 Licenses once it's released".
Re:I'm not that surprised. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well it's too late. If you need a Windows Datacenter licenses (e.g. for new hardware) then you don't really have a lot of choice, even if you do want to use 2012 or 2008. We have ours on SA. Even with a price hike, it's still a pretty good deal. What's more newsworthy is they have reduced the virtualisation count for Enterprise (down from 4 to 2) and gone to a per-CPU price.
Those businesses that are using Datacenter probably wont notice the actual price hike so much... You only run Datacenter on some serious hardware. (e.g. 20 core, 512GB RAM etc. and there are relatively few requirements in a single org), which is why I think the price hike is overdue. This is the Microsoft equivilant of the VMWare VSphere 5 VMEM fiasco... Something tells me Microsoft are in a better position than VMWARE though.
Jason
Re:I'm not that surprised. (Score:5, Interesting)
R2 doesn't deliver any outstanding new features, but with higher and higher consolidation ratios this was pretty much inevitable, we've gone from 72GB to 144GB to 384GB of ram in our hosts in 3.5 years while the cost of the hardware has actually dropped. Since datacenter edition allows unlimited virtualization that means people need fewer license and hence to keep up revenue costs per license rise. Trust me, the other MS prices from last fall had a MUCH larger impact on most enterprises EA renewal than this little increase will.
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From Windows 2008 a ton. Its finally vm ready where if you allocate 2 gigs of ram it wont use a 100% of the ram. Like Linux it will dynamically use it. It supports AD data compression too which is nice for slow wan links. You can now run a dns and ad controller in a VM finally! Also HyperV is now a type 1 virtualizer and goes head to head with VMware.That is the biggest selling point for the datacenter edition.
R2 just has a sily role menu to chose from over R1 and some IIs feautures.
So no business reason ov
Re:I'm not that surprised. (Score:5, Informative)
What is the gain for this pain? From a business standpoint, I would want to know what R2 delivers that would necessitate a price increase. If there isn't much then this makes it hard sell for businesses: "We get to pay more for no reason!"
A number of important improvements to Hyper-V allowing higher VM density and (if you run 2012R2 guests) improved performance because of more direct access to hardware. Also, Hyper-V replica
Storage Spaces with tiered storage (what is usually only available with SANs). You can fit a server with regular disks, fast disks and/or SSDs and set up tiered storage spaces, e.g. with parity (think ZFS). Server 2012R2 will then move "hot blocks" to faster disks and move them back to slower disks when they are not accessed as often anymore, letting other hot blocks utilize the faster tier.
A number of manageability improvements, among those PowerShell with Desired State Configuration (think puppet/chef on steroids for what is not already covered by group policies).
There's more. You can read some of it here: http://www.zdnet.com/windows-server-2012-r2-a-first-look-7000017675/ [zdnet.com]
Whether it is value enough to justify the price increase is probably subjective. However, it could steal away some SAN business as you now basically can set it up to provide the same features as (at least) entry level SANs. Also the higher VM density could be worth money.
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it does not offer unlimited CALs though, you still have to pay for them, and the cost of them is rising similarly. So you might be able to run 1000 VMs on a single physical server (please note, the cost is per processor, not per server), but all those users will start to look really expensive.
There is no Enterprise edition anymore either - Server 2012 has Datacentre, Standard, Essentials, and Foundation. The cost ratio is if you run 16 VMs per standard licence, so if you are running a 16 CPU server, you'd b
Re:I'm not that surprised. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you've mis-calculated.. $1764 gets your 4 VMs. $12310 gets you unlimited VMs. So it's under 24 VMs (12 CPU licenses) that you might be better off running with many essential licenses. Of course the one advantage to running with multiple standard licenses is that you could having many more CPUs in the server than you could afford with Datacentre.
I expect this is what the plan is, this new pricing makes 4 way servers possibly interesting again and one wa or the other increases Windows licensing revenue.
What's also nice is they finally done away with the crippled standard vs enterprise nonsense. Paying almost double for one tiny feature (like ts session balancing) gets a bit annoying on a large TS farm. There are some silver linings here.
Jason
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As I understand it, you can run an unlimited number of VM instances on Win2k12R2, but don't you need a license for each and every one of these VM ? That must cost something, no?
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It amazes me that there are people who work as analysts of Microsofts' licensing scemes and pricing, but there are, because the schemes are so complex and wrapped in Microsoft's own language.
In this case, the Datacenter edition allows unlimited "OSEs" to run on the system without having to buy a license for each "OSE". What's an
Re:I'm not that surprised. (Score:5, Funny)
Redhat don't sell Windows licenses last time I checked.
Jason.
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How much would that cost from RedHat?
Redhat don't sell Windows licenses last time I checked.
We get Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for about $1,000 per year.
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and how much per instance if you virtualize them?
with Windows 2012 R2 you can pay once for the server license and get unlimited virtual licenses of the OS for that server
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Darn those interns...they go to make big bucks at your competition with their silly naive ideas.....
Good riddance. (Score:2)
Re:Good riddance. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, and I wonder what the prices would be if there were no Linux or BSDs, and people had to choose between MS, solaris, some other flavours of unix, OSX.
Free software helps even those not adopting it.
I must, I must increase my going bust (Score:5, Funny)
Poor Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
They've got to pay for all of those Slates they have stuck in the warehouse.
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I think you have to look up "good" in the dictionary again...
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The good news is that customers will get 5 Surface RT's thrown in for free.
Plus a couple of chairs.
Microsoft layoffs down the road? (Score:4, Interesting)
These dramatic price hikes look like Microsoft is working to stem the tide of massive losses with increased revenue in their core product domains. They are running out of options as each new offering falls flat on its face over and over again. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some significant trimming of "non-essential" personnel in the next few years to further boost the quarterly profits.
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These dramatic price hikes look like Microsoft is working to stem the tide of massive losses with increased revenue in their core product domains.
Microsft is still an extremely profitable company - Profit margins of over 28% [yahoo.com].
But their stock price hasn't done much in over a year - It's about where it's at in March of '12.
Wall Street doesn't like that. They want growth.
MS, I think, is hoping that this will give a revenue and profit boost to help the stock price.
In meantime, I just see MS throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.
I don't necessarily see cuts - although that is a quick way to boost profits short terms - I do see possible acquisit
Re:Microsoft layoffs down the road? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wall street doesn't love Microsoft because its business model for the last dozen years ago is about squeezing increasing license fees out of locked in customers. Nobody is under any illusion about where that leads.
Knowing that, Microsoft has been desperately thrashing about trying to find some new market into which it can extend its monopoly. Arguably, the biggest single factor in forestalling Microsoft's boundless ambition was Mozilla, which ended Microsoft's dreams of becoming gatekeeper to the internet. Then Apple killed Microsoft's hopes in the phone market and Sony refused to concede the high end console market. Next sea change is, the corporate workplace moves to the cloud and Microsoft isn't invited to the party.
Last year's flurry of new product hype was just comical. Microsoft got the benefit of the doubt that time. They shot their wad, next manic outbreak of product announcements will get exactly zero cred.
Gov Balmer (Score:5, Funny)
Princess Leia: Governor Balmer, I should have expected to find you holding Gates' leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.
Governor Balmer: Charming to the last. You don't know how hard I found it, signing the order to terminate your license.
Princess Leia: I'm surprised that you had the courage to take the responsibility yourself.
Governor Balmer: Princess Leia, before your execution, I'd like you to join me for a ceremony that will make this game console operational. No IT department will dare oppose the Emperor now.
Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Balmer, the more data centers will slip through your fingers.
Governor Balmer: Not after we demonstrate the capabilities of Windows 8!
Re:Gov Balmer (Score:5, Funny)
Princess Leia: No! Alderaan is peaceful! We have no weapons, you can't possibly... Wait, nothing's happening. Isn't that supposed to be doing something?
Governor Balmer: Give me a minute. Try the hot corner. No, the other one! Get out of the way. Desktop Mode.... WHERE THE %#@$ IS THE START MENU?
Re: (Score:2)
Not after we demonstrate the capabilities of Windows 8!
The difference being that the Deathstar actually did was it was supposed to do.
Thank you Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you Microsoft. This makes implementing enterprise strategy so much easier. So let's see.. in the past year we've ditched Microsoft CRM completely. We got rid of 2 SQL Server instances. We will purchase SQL 2012, but with only half the CAL's. These price increases make it so much easier to consider other options.
My licensing costs (Score:5, Informative)
CentOS 6 - $0.00
Apache - $0.00
MariaDB - $0.00
PHP - $0.00
GNU C++ - $0.00
TOTAL -- $0.00
Plus number of hours spent auditing licensing: ZERO
Now let's look at my development tools:XCode, SSH, Firefox, Chrome, VIM, and the command line. For an additional zero dollars.
But the best bit is that even if MS said, "Dude you are so wonderful that we will now give you an unlimited license to every product we have completely for free for life." I wouldn't even crack the film wrap on the packaging. It is not out of some religious hatred of MS but that the products I use match my needs perfectly. So for me at least to switch back to MS would be to make my products and productivity worse.
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Skipping the walloping headache from trying to figure out how many CALs I need: priceless!
Covering losses... (Score:2)
MS is just covering losses on their Surface, it shouldn't be a huge surprise. ;-)
This was preliminary (Score:2)
Sure, it looks expensive, but Microsoft is throwing in a Surface RT I believe.
Woot!
Re:This was preliminary (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, it looks expensive, but Microsoft is throwing in a Surface RT I believe.
Woot!
Duck!
Smaller percentage increase than Linux. (Score:5, Funny)
The license fees for running Linux have effectively doubled every year since it came out.
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Somebody didn't get the joke.
Re:Smaller percentage increase than Linux. (Score:4, Informative)
Let me see... Linux is now out for 22 years... zero times 2 to the 22nd power is... still zero!
Microsoft is really trying to boost Linux download (Score:2)
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Replicated with Linux, a few things like samba, and _a datacenter support contract_
The gap in price gets much lower when you compare apples to apples. If you just want a small cluster of windows servers for your business, you can get that for almost free (included support!)
Re:Microsoft is really trying to boost Linux downl (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they insane? Six grand for a server OS that literally can be replicated with any Linux distribution and a few things like SAMBA, Rsnapshot, etc? So long as it LOOKS like a Windows server to the user community, they don't care.
I take it you have not seen an Oracle License for Solaris have you?
They go for up to $100,000 as the database is part of the deal whether you need it or not!
$6,000 is laughable cheap as the real cost comes when Samba doesn't work for a 3,000 user environment where shit wont break because of a Windows Update to the clients or if you need virtualization.
VSPhere last time I looked was $8000+. So $6,000 is -$2000 less than debian plus VSPhere to run your virtual machines believe it or not. Dynamic I/o that moves the requests to the least uitilized SAN/volume means hardware savings too and Linux (outside of IBM's flavor) still does not have this.
The enteprise is totally different than the desktop world.
Microsoft shop (Score:2)
Where I work is a Microsoft shop. Almost all of the servers are Microsoft with the emphasis on keeping it that way. If I was told to convert 50% my machines over to Linux I could do it pretty quickly. Now will this price increase make this happen?
slipstream Windows Azure into the enterprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hello,
While raising the price on an enterprise product is a good way to boost short-term revenue, it seems to me that companies might begin to seek less expensive alternatives. In this case, though, that might not be Linux at all.
I haven't seen any mention of this so far, but I have to wonder if the price increase might be an attempt to make enterprises look at Windows Azure [windowsazure.com] as an alternative to continuing to run their own datacenters.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
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Oi, Microsoft! You're doing it wrong! [akamaihd.net]
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MS should increase all of their licensing costs by 500-1000%
That's a bit much, but I do think they should go for 60%. People will pay it. Balmer is leaving shareholder money on the table.
and they can pull a Nortel while they flush themselves down the toilet.
People only run Microsoft in a data center if they have to. If they have to, they will pay what they need to.
Microsoft's calculation should be thus:
1) what is the average # of servers that one of their clients has?
2) what would it cost that client to
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This is an increase in the cost of the Datacenter version, not a comparison of the Datacenter version to non-Datacenter versions, so your point is meaningless.
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Im fairly certain R2 does more stuff than R1.
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I love how people jump in & automatically say they are doing it wrong! This makes the point of asking how are others charging for similar products/services?
the price hike is still 2000 bottles of beer for the company picnic.... still, it's a case of "you're using less produce so hey, pay us more for what you're using so we can keep getting the same money".
ram and cpu price drops being the reason why you could get by with one instead of two.. let's get this out of the way: the whole how the datacenter ed. is priced is stupid and it's just going to either ever increase(as you can run more and more vm's on single license) or they're going to price it by vm instan
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Redhat is the preferred linux distro for business servers. Mainly because it has that "support licencing available" feature that mangers love so much. Its also a very good distro that doesn't get updated so often that you'll always be managing it.
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