Microsoft to kill Select Agreement rebates, rain cash on cloud deals From tomorrow, Microsoft will put a bullet in Select Agreement rebates handed to UK business partners as part of a wider shake-up of the overall fees structure. Licensing Solutions Partners (LSPs) were making 2.5 per cent in back-end margin based on a deal's revenues and used this to offer discounts to customers to get them to …
Sounds like yet another step in the quest to end the options of buying perpetual licenses.
Microsoft is very heavily pushing cloud-based software with this latest iteration of the Windows/Office release cycle:
- Office 365 subscriptions are being sold cheaper than perpetual licenses (up to a certain break-even point).
- Windows client OSes now default to using your Windows Live/SkyDrive account for logging in
- Windows Server 2012 R2's new feature list almost exclusively revolves around cloud and virtualization
- TechNet subscriptions are now gone in favor of hosting virtual labs or getting you to buy Azure time for your testing
Considering the fact that Office 365 is just a metered, App-V'd version of the full Office 2013 product, the motivations are pretty clear -- force people onto a monthly subscription model. Enterprise Agreements were the corporate versions of this, now it's being pushed down to the end user. Unfortunately, people seem to be indicating that they're willing to go down this route. Adobe Creative Cloud is another example -- vocally protested by IT and end users alike, but when push came to shove, they shut up and paid the monthly fees.
I know the cloud thing isn't just a fad, but I do think there will be a chunk of the market who still wants perpetual license rights and will apparently have to pay a premium for it.
>vocally protested by IT and end users alike, but when push came to shove, they shut up and paid the monthly fees.
I suspect that the business'es were between a rock and a hard place and paying the monthly subscription was the lesser of the two evils, as it enabled companies to largely continue working as before with only a minimal change to IT.
Following on from changes to Service Provider Licensing Agreements (see http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/09/24/microsoft_spla_fees/ ) this is only logical and confirms that MS are increasing the importance of their cloud business and are wanting to exert greater direct control over it than with it's previous licensing arrangements.
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