Dive Brief:
- Microsoft announced plans late last week to increase the price of its enterprise software and cloud services in the United Kingdom because of devaluation of the British Pound stemming from Brexit.
- British pound prices for on-premises enterprise software will increase by 13% to realign close to euro levels, while most enterprise cloud prices in British pounds will increase by 22% to realign, according to the company. The changes to pricing will take effect January 2017.
- Last April, Microsoft made similar changes to pricing in Norwegian krone and Swiss franc.
Dive Insight:
Microsoft posted a blog about the change, explaining it periodically assesses the "impact of local pricing of our products and services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across the region."
Some customers, such as those with Enterprise Agreements or cloud commitment subscriptions, will not experience a price change during the term of their agreement, Microsoft said.
It’s not surprising that Brexit will drive higher prices for IT products and services in Britain. An IT spending forecast released by Gartner in June predicted the U.K.'s tech spending will move into negative territory well into 2017. But Gartner also predicted Brexit will affect global IT spending as well.
