Microsoft slammed by Amazon and Google for outsourcing price rises

Senior executives from Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are throwing shade at Microsoft for their upcoming price increase.

At the same time of announcing the release of its Azure Dedicated Host service; Microsoft also declared the increase in the price of their cloud and software services earlier this month:

We’re updating the outsourcing terms for Microsoft on-premises licenses to clarify the distinction between on-premises/traditional outsourcing and cloud services and create more consistent licensing terms across multitenant and dedicated hosted cloud services. Beginning October 1, 2019, on-premises licenses purchased without Software Assurance and mobility rights cannot be deployed with dedicated hosted cloud services offered by the following public cloud providers: Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon (including VMware Cloud on AWS), and Google. They will be referred to as “Listed Providers”.

The completely unintended effect of the policy would be that it would be dramatically cheaper to run Microsoft’s software on their own cloud rather than on AWS or Google Cloud.

Google Cloud President, Robert Enslin, had this to say on Twitter:

Shelf-ware. Complex pricing. And now vendor lock-in. Microsoft is taking its greatest hits from the ’90s to the cloud.

Amazon Web Services Chief Technology Officer, Werner Vogels, was also quick to chip in:

Yet another bait+switch by $MSFT, eliminating license benefits to force MS use. 1st, MS took away BYOL SQL Server on RDS, now no Windows upgrades w/BYOL on#AWS. Hard to trust a co. who raises prices, eliminates benefits, + restricts freedom of choice.

AWO’s Vice President, Sandy Carter, was also disapproving of the decision; making a LinkedIn post titled: Why AWS is the best place for your Windows workloads, and how Microsoft is changing their licensing to try to awkwardly force you into Azure.

In the blog post, Carter implies that the decision is a matter of abuse of power:

Microsoft wants you to believe that this is just “removal of outsourcing rights”, but Microsoft is looking to restrict what computer you can use. And what cloud.

In Microsoft’s defence, the company claimed that their offering of more services, as well as an increase in competition, is responsible for the price rise.  Alternatively, we could just be seeing a bit of the “old Microsoft” come out as they struggle to dominate their new growth centre.

Source: developsonline