Microsoft revises software licensing, cloud policies amid EU regulator scrutiny Microsoft is offering a series of concessions over its software licensing policies to European cloud providers in a bid to address their accusations of anti-competitive tactics and cool any interest from local regulators. OVHcloud, along with several other cloud services purveyors including Nextcloud, filed class-action …
That the regulators will also drop a ban hammer on the per-CPU-core licensing scheme, the costs of which is forcing organizations to migrate from their own hardware to Azure.
You have a server with an 8 core CPU? Oh sorry, the minimum is a 16-core license. Want to pay for 8 cores? Here is an Azure VM with 8 VCPUs for you. That perfectly good server you own? To the landfill it goes but we care about environment we pinky swear! Here, have some cold calls from our partners' sales departments with whom we are sharing your Azure data while we figure out further ways of monetizing you and locking you in permanently.
In your edge-case example, you're talking about an $500 loss. Given the price of DRAM these days, licensing is a drop in the bucket these days, if you're buying OE DRAM, at least.
Hell, do yourself a favor and buy that second 8-core processor. You'll thank yourself in 2-3 years time. Plus, I presume you're at least taking advantage of the two vOSE licenses and not running bare-metal?
Furthermore - Windows Server Standard cost has been going down over the years. For example, if I use the CPI Inflation Calculator [0] and input the MSRP price of Windows Server Standard 2008 (not a two-processor, eight-core per proc minimum license) of $999, I get (rounded up a tad) about $1,375. Far cheaper than the MSRP of $1,069 today.
Sure, back then 2008 Standard supported four CPU... but do you really want to compare the bees knees of 2008 versus 2022? I think the 5315Y, 6334, 8356H or 4309Y 8-core procs today will eat all the Xeon DP lunches, and consume less power to boot.
Taking a look at most of the processors around 2007/8 (at the time when 2008 Server came out), all the Xeon DP had 2 to 4 cores per processor. The 4 socket processor, Xeon MP series, were two to four to six cores each.
I don't recall at the moment, but when Microsoft transitioned Server Standard to the two proc/eight core minimum, they priced that at the same cost of the prior version of Windows Server Standard in a "typical" CPU/core count.
So, your single proc, eight core server today would basically have costed the same "back in the day" license-wise, but with a single CPU purchased.
TL;DR: Your post holds no water.
[0]https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
All good then, nothing to see here, look away...I think not, here is a list of anticompetitive things I can think of that Msft has done recently.
- Bundle teams with office to try to kill competing products like slack, zoom
- Removed MSDN rights from customers who use any cloud other than Azure
- Require customers to ditch on-prem Windows licences and pay for new ones in the cloud, except for Azure
- Remove the rights from customers to take office to the cloud, except in Azure
- Make customers pay for VDA licences in the cloud, except for Azure
- Make Cloud providers sell MSFT software through a separate type of licence (SPLA) which increases in cost every year
- Go on a concerted effort to convert older licences (that can be brought to other clouds) to subscription licencing which cant be taken to the cloud (accept Azure) - Msft is being sued by Value licencing for this.
- Remove the bring your own licence option for competing SQL PaaS services on other clouds (amazon RDS)
Don't forget
* falsely claiming their product only works with another of their products (again) : https://twitter.com/thefalken/status/1521834999376494593/photo/1
* shipping OneDrive by default
* BONUS - with private integration far better than what Dropbox or even NextCloud can achieve
- Bundle teams with office to try to kill competing products like slack, zoom
What does that have to do with licensing Windows Server on your own hardware?
- Removed MSDN rights from customers who use any cloud other than Azure
What does that have to do with licensing Windows Server on your own hardware?
- Require customers to ditch on-prem Windows licences and pay for new ones in the cloud, except for Azure
Have they, really? Are you stating that it is now impossible to buy Windows Server OS licenses for physical servers?
- Remove the rights from customers to take office to the cloud, except in Azure
What does that have to do with licensing Windows Server on your own hardware?
- Make customers pay for VDA licences in the cloud, except for Azure
What does that have to do with licensing Windows Server on your own hardware?
- Make Cloud providers sell MSFT software through a separate type of licence (SPLA) which increases in cost every year
What does that have to do with licensing Windows Server on your own hardware?
- Go on a concerted effort to convert older licences (that can be brought to other clouds) to subscription licencing which cant be taken to the cloud (accept Azure) - Msft is being sued by Value licencing for this.
What does that have to do with licensing Windows Server on your own hardware?
- Remove the bring your own licence option for competing SQL PaaS services on other clouds (amazon RDS)
What does that have to do with licensing Windows Server on your own hardware?
Seems that you are conflating competition between cloud providers using another vendor's application with licensing the same vendor's application on your own hardware.
Sure - microsoft v any other random cloud provider isn't a friendly relationship - however - you, as your own company/user, are still free to purchase Microsoft server licensing and run that on your own hardware.
You need to do your own CBA. If running on your own hardware isn't possible, for whatever reason(s), then you should entertain the next best solution. If that next best solution isn't the cheapest - then you need to take a secondary analysis and determine why the next best solution that is the cheapest, isn't the best. At the conclusion, you will have arrived at the what and why the solution chosen, is the best for you.
By changing their licensing strategy MS hopes to pull the rug from under the case against them.
In the mean time the Hosting companies will experience loss of business due to unfair licensing practices of MS.
Lets hope the courts won't be deluded by this legal guerrilla warfare conducted by MS to wipe out competition and will fine MS to such an extent that those losses are compensated.
If the EU is halfway serious about supporting an EU based IT industry, they should take effective measures to stop a company, that already has a de-facto software monopoly, from becoming an overly powerful hosting company. Such a situation will end badly for everyone.
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