#Microsoft Price changes for user CALs

As always, pricing is going up not down!

Microsoft have recently contacted their partners to inform them that the cost of purchasing user CALs will increase, device CALs will be unaffected.  This will cover user CALs for nearly all Microsoft products.

As you will see from the notifation below, there is no surprise that Microsoft are not making any public anouncment about this.

Price changes are taking effect on the 1st of December 2012

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Communication from Microsoft

Dear Partner,

I would like to share with you information about Microsoft’s new User CAL Differentiating Pricing that will take effect December 1, 2012. While there will not be a public announcement of this information, I wanted to make you aware of this update so that you can use it now in sales conversations with your customers who are considering renewing their agreements. 

This change primarily affects customers with Enterprise or Select agreements but most Volume Licensing and OEM programs are also affected.

The main highlights of the differentiated CAL pricing include the following, and additional details are included in the attached FAQ.

-          Customers can continue to choose to license CALs per User or per Device.  Customers may prefer device CALs if they have fewer devices than users and prefer to count devices.  Customers may prefer user CALs if they have fewer users than devices and prefer to count users.

-          User CALs will have a +15% price premium.  Device CAL pricing will see no price change. 

-          All Volume Licensing programs* will be affected.  Microsoft will apply the User CAL price premium across all User Based CAL products and programs in Volume Licensing and OEM programs.

·          Differentiated CAL pricing will take effect with the release of the December price list.  Subject to current approvals, customers my request early renewal to take advantage of lower User CAL pricing prior to December 1, 2012.

·          Affected User CALs include: 

o   Bing Maps Server CAL

o   Core CAL Suite

o   Enterprise CAL Suite

o   Exchange Server Std/Ent CALs

o   Lync Server Std/Ent/Plus CALs

o   Project Server CAL

o   SharePoint Server Std/Ent CALs

o   System Center 2012 Client Management Suite

o   System Center Configuration Manager

o   System Center Endpoint Protection

o   Visual Studio TFS CAL

o   Windows Mulipoint Server CAL

o   Windows Server CAL

o   Windows Server RDS, RMS, Terminal Services CAL

*Does not include Dynamics, SQL, SPLA or EES (Academic)