Microsoft is making radical changes to its software
pricing that aims to cut costs for customers and force other
vendors to dump their own licensing models.
The shake-up is prompted by Microsoft’s backing of
virtualisation technology. Virtualisation allows multiple images of
an operating system to run on the same server, when actually only
one copy is deployed. This means customers should be able to reduce
the numbers of servers they need and so cut costs.
Unfortunately, the current processor-based pricing model doesn’t
fit easily with virtualisation and works out more expensive for
customers.
From December, Microsoft aims to price its Windows Server System
family based on the number of images of that product on a server
rather than the number of processors. This could potentially cut
costs substantially throughout your organisation.
Theoretically, you will be able to transfer licenses between
machines, giving you greater flexibility to respond to apply
computing power where it’s needed.
Inevitably, if Microsoft sneezes the software world gets a
chill. This latest Microsoft announcement should accelerate what
analysts believe are unavoidable licensing changes needed to cope
with virtualisation and grid computing.