Microsoft announces price increases from March 2022

Microsoft have announced changes to their commercial pricing for various products.

Microsoft has advised that "this updated pricing reflects the increased value they have delivered to their customers

and innovations they’ve delivered over the past decade in three key areas—communications and collaboration, security and compliance, and

AI and automation—as well as the addition of audio conferencing capabilities".

1. Communication and collaboration. Mi

crosoft Teams is the new front end across work, life, and learning for more than 250 million monthly active users. Teams was launched in 2017 as the only integrated solution where users can meet, chat, call, collaborate, and automate business processes—with the power of the Office apps—all within the flow of work. In 2020 alone over 300 new capabilities were released, including Together mode, background effects, large gallery view, raise hand, live reactions, breakout rooms, live captions with speaker attribution, and Fluid components, just to name a few.

A new category of collaborative applications was introduced in Teams, empowering people and organizations for hybrid work through deep integrations with Power Platform, Whiteboard, Lists, Planner, Shifts, Forms, and SharePoint.

2. Security and compliance. The cybersecurity landscape is more complex than ever. With the accelerating volume, sophistication, and scale of cyberattacks, security and compliance are a priority for every organization. Microsoft have added new attack surface reduction capabilities to help organizations defend against ransomware and other threats. They have added capabilities like data loss prevention (DLP) for email and documents, sensitivity labels, and message encryption to help keep

important data within the organization. And they have added powerful compliance capabilities that help organizations reduce risk and respond to increasing regulatory requirements such as Content Search, eDiscovery, and core Litigation Hold. Built-in mobile device management (MDM) and other management tools like Microsoft Endpoint Manager help admins support remote and hybrid workforces.