Microsoft announces price increase for Office 365 and Microsoft 365

Microsoft has announced that the new pricing will start in March 2022.
Microsoft has announced that the new pricing will start in March 2022.

For the fist time in 10 years, Microsoft has announced a price increase for its Office 365 and Microsoft 365. This increase will be effective from March 2022, and will impact commercial and business users of Microsoft’s SaaS service. There will be no changes in pricing to education or standard consumers. These price changes mark “the first substantive pricing update since we launched Office 365 a decade ago,” said Microsoft 365 chief Jared Spataro in a blog post today.

Updated pricing

Microsoft first launched Office 365 in 2011 across 40 markets, and have been improving the product since. In July, Microsoft unveiled its new Windows 365, designed to deliver a full, personalised PC experience from the cloud to any device, giving workers and organisations power, simplicity and security for hybrid work.

“Hybrid work has fundamentally changed the role of technology in organisations today,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Microsoft 365. “With workforces more disparate than ever before, organisations need a new way to deliver a great productivity experience with increased versatility, simplicity and security. Cloud PC is an exciting new category of hybrid personal computing that turns any device into a personalised, productive and secure digital workspace. Today’s announcement of Windows 365 is just the beginning of what will be possible as we blur the lines between the device and the cloud.”

The update introduces a new way to experience Windows 10 or Windows 11 to businesses of all sizes. Windows 365 takes the operating system to the Microsoft cloud, streaming the full Windows experience to personal or corporate devices. Window’s 365 is built with the principles of Zero Trust, and secures and stores information in the cloud, and not on the device, providing a secure, productive experience for workers from interns and contractors to software developers and industrial designers. 

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Windows 365 also seeks to create a new hybrid personal computing category called Cloud PC, which uses both the power of the cloud and the device’s capabilities. The latest update represents a groundbreaking development as organizations worldwide grapple with the best ways to facilitate hybrid work models where employees are both on-site and distributed across the globe.

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Amber Donovan-Stevens

Amber is a Content Editor at Top Business Tech

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