Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.
The declarations came fast and furious this week following news of price increases for some key cloud services: The race to the bottom is finished, the era of cheap cloud computing is over. But a closer look at what is really happening produces a more muddled picture, which unfortunately will make it even more difficult for the enterprise to chart the correct course through the clouds.
The biggest price reduction in recent weeks came from Microsoft, which has announced hikes of as much as 26 percent for such popular products as Azure, Office 365, CRM Online and the Enterprise Mobility Suite. The new rates are set to take effect August 1 and will affect customers in Europe, Canada and Australia, but only those who sign or renew their contracts – existing annual volume licensing agreements will not be affected until, of course, it’s time for renewal. The chief justification for the increases is the fluctuating currency rates…
This may or may not prove to be a winning strategy for Microsoft, however, as low cost still holds a large advantage for business users, if not necessarily the enterprises they serve. According to an analysis by Cowen & Co., Amazon customers are on pace to increase their consumption of services at much higher rates than Microsoft, Google and other providers – with the average increase for 2015 at a stunning 43 percent. Even with more expensive, enterprise-facing services like IaaS, Amazon draws the highest per-user average at $124,000, although Microsoft has gained ground recently to about $115,000…
Read more from the source @ http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/infrastructure/cloud-costs-vs.-cloud-value-a-complicated-picture.html
