What do Microsoft price increases and soda have in common?  They both “pop.”   Bad. Very bad.  Yes, I am a dad.  But sadly, it is true.  Microsoft announced price increases across various programs in January, including our dear friend SPLA.  Products such asWindows Server and Office products are impacted.  Reach out to us for more specific details in your region.

If we all know price increases are inevitable (look at the price of a cheeseburger), what will we do about it?

In speaking with a hoster, price increases are only a significant issue if they are limited to just the SPLA program. It’s not just about the lowest price but also things like regulatory compliance, business requirements,SLA requirements, etc., that influence an end-customer decision.

However, what I have found is most hosters focus on price increases and compliance (audits), not how to potentially reduce licensing costs.  At Octopus, we help with audits, no question.  However, where we find themost successful hosters, we use our solution to uncover over-licensing.  Yes, it does happen.  Imagine for a moment you can reduce your SQL footprint or restrict who can access RDS. What about all the rules in SPLA that are beneficial to a hoster?  Wait…what? Beneficial?  Yes.  There are benefits such as internal use, trials, and administrative access (20 users per data center plus an additional two users per operating system environment).

Too many hosters report the same thing month over month with zero fluctuation.  What that tells me isyou are not doing anything accurate.  You are just reporting usage because Microsoft told you to report usage.  Use SPLA reporting as business intelligence to determine what is happening in your data center.  What are users accessing and when?  What security policies can you implement nowto reduce user counts? How are you tracking end-customer deployments?  Do you have a way to verify licenses andsoftware assurance?  

You are under SPLA for a reason.  You offer something unique that your customers cannot receive from the List Providers.  It is very important to stay on top of these licensing changes, their impact, and the benefits you can take advantage of.  I encourage our readers to join our community (community.octopus.cloud) where we post videos, articles, discussions, on all things Microsoft.  

Thank you for reading,

SPLA Man

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