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With increasing competition from Google, Microsoft has reduced prices of its Office suite of products.
The company has decided to drop prices to Rs 100 per month for a seat (Microsoft charges per seat instead of per user).
Earlier, Microsoft's Office suite that includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Sharepoint, enterprise search, Exchange and others were priced in the region of Rs 500 and above per seat per month.
For Rs 100, Microsoft will offer instant messaging and online presence and other additional features will be charged extra.
With increasing number of companies preferring to move to the web and using technologies like cloud computing, Microsoft has decided to cut prices on the Office suite to enable enterprises to adopt its solutions in an affordable manner.
For Rs 1,080 per user, per month, organisations can get Office Professional Plus along with e-mail, voicemail, enterprise social networking, instant messaging, Web portals, extranets, voice conferencing and videoconferencing, web conferencing, 24x7 phone support and on-premises licenses. Competitor Google, prices its office suite of products at Rs 250 per month per seat.
The company is hoping that increased adoption of its office products will drive revenues in India and globally. “We will target the 4-5 million small and medium enterprises in India aggressively with our Office 365 range of products,” Mr Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Microsoft Business Division, told Business Line at TechEd.
According to Q2 data, Micrososft has sold 200 million licences of Office 2010 in the 18 months since launch. The company is seeing a shift in Office usage patterns as companies are starting to embrace the flexibility, pay-as-you-use and other features offered by the cloud. The early adoption trends show that small businesses want full-featured professional technology, delivered through the cloud, Mr Manchanda added. According to data available, there are around 5 million small and medium sized companies in India as of 2011.
> venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in
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