Windows 10 Enterprise Subscription Is $84 Per User Annually

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
By a show of hands, how many of you would be willing to pay $84 per year for a Windows 10 Enterprise subscription? I'm not kidding, this is a legit question. Anyone? Personally I wouldn't, but I would be more inclined to do so if the price was closer to $40 a year.

Microsoft took the wraps off the pricing of one of the two renamed versions of Windows 10 Enterprise at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto on July 12. Windows 10 Enterprise E3 is the name of the lower-end of two different versions of Windows 10 Enterprise. Windows 10 Enterprise E5 is the new name of the Windows 10 Enterprise version that also will include Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, a new Microsoft service for detecting and responding to attacks.
 
At work we pay $95 a year per person for a client upgrade OS (must have a windows OS licence to upgrade from), Office + Visual Studio. However we are an academic institution. We have been paying this way for over a decade. I say it was cheaper when we purchased the os, vs, and office al la carte (since we don't upgrade often) but it is simpler now that every PC has only 1 ms licence to have to worry about. A second frustration is we are no longer permitted to purchase windows separately (and since there is no al la carte) so we can no longer build our own PCs.
 
Last edited:
Well, to be fair this includes an element of support too right? That can make a huge difference in an Enterprise setting. I wouldn't pay this much for Windows subscription at home.

In fact, I'd be willing to pay as follows for a Windows subscription:

$99/5 years ~ $20 per year for a Home version.

$139/5 years ~$28 per year for a Pro version.

I'd prefer to not subscribe at all, and just pay a one time license fee, but if the pricing is similar to what I am currently paying now (as above) I could be persuaded.
 
I would do 30 a year for a home system as long as the system still worked if the subscription ended, much like an Antivirus sub. Of course you will not get any updates if your sub runs out but that's the price you pay
 
The $7 per month deal is for Cloud Partners, which offer those OS seats to businesses. You will not be going to Best Buy and buying an $84/year subscription to Windows Enterprise.

/in before users of Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB who don't understand what LTS means complain about not being able to get feature updates
 
That price is part of their new business bundles which is Pro OS, office 365, and 15GB of one drive storage which can then be bundled into the Azure AD and cloud exchange offerings. For small and medium businesses it is a big deal. For a business of 5 people you can tie that into the said AD and exchange for a little under ~1000 a year. It will do away with the need to own your own on site server which with either windows or linux the costs to operate spread over a 5 year period easily exceeds 1k a year. Factor in the support you get with it and basically eliminating the need for most businesses to rely on local techs for most of their day to day problems that arise and this is a big cost saver for most.
 
I would not be willing to pay for broken crap but I will take it for free and tweak the crap out. One could go the linux route and not have this issue and just be done with it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, to be fair this includes an element of support too right? That can make a huge difference in an Enterprise setting. I wouldn't pay this much for Windows subscription at home.

In fact, I'd be willing to pay as follows for a Windows subscription:

$99/5 years ~ $20 per year for a Home version.

$139/5 years ~$28 per year for a Pro version.

I'd prefer to not subscribe at all, and just pay a one time license fee, but if the pricing is similar to what I am currently paying now (as above) I could be persuaded.
Click to expand...

Yeah there are a lot of things going on with that price. You get support and upgrades, but usually you would bundle that in with Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive so the price would come down.
 
I suppose if you want to avoid volume licensing, this option wouldn't be to shabby.
drescherjm said:
At work we pay $95 a year per person for a client upgrade OS (must have a windows OS licence to upgrade from), Office + Visual Studio. However we are an academic institution. We have been paying this way for over a decade. I say it was cheaper when we purchased the os, vs, and office al la carte (since we don't upgrade often) but it is simpler now that every PC has only 1 ms licence to have to worry about. A second frustration is we are no longer permitted to purchase windows separately (and since there is no al la carte) so we can no longer build our own PCs.
Click to expand...
You could still build your own stations, you would just need to buy an OS license for it. You can buy a full Win 10 Pro license with academic discount for about $130 on CDWG.

But now days, unless you have very specific needs or very high end workstations you are not really saving much money building your own computers when you consider time required to assemble dozens or more desktops.
 
Shmee said:
Yeah there are a lot of things going on with that price. You get support and upgrades, but usually you would bundle that in with Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive so the price would come down.
Click to expand...
The E3 and E5 bundles do include Azure AD, and hosted exchange as well as One Drive for each registered user. E5 also grants access to skype pro and Lync services both include Office 365. And full phone support, have enough users and the cost comes down substantially. I have a meeting with accounting at the end of the week about signing a 5 year agreement for the E3 bundle for over 500 users. The cost savings on Data backups alone grants a positive net return on the contract, let alone server refreshes.
 
bigdogchris said:
I suppose if you want to avoid volume licensing, this option wouldn't be to shabby.
You could still build your own stations, you would just need to buy an OS license for it. You can buy a full Win 10 Pro license with academic discount for about $130 on CDWG.
Click to expand...

I will check this option. cdw-g is the "approved vendor" however the products we can purchase from them has limitations. We also have an exclusive deal with Dell that now prevents us from purchasing full systems from anyone other than Dell. We don't even see PCs or notebooks listed at cdw-g under our contract page. We do see components however.

Edit:
Thanks. I see some client OSs in the list. I wonder if we get denied when we try to purchase..
 
Last edited:
M76 said:
What? Pay for windows 10? Why would I pay for it when I didn't want it for free?

As for subscriptions, I'd never sign up. Windows is not a service. It's software, that I should be able to buy once and use forever.
Click to expand...
This is aimed at businesses, most of which are already running various software agreements for hosting, data backups, tech support, and software assurances. This takes these various $5 and 10$ monthly charges that they are paying to separate companies and rolls it all into one tidy bundle that all goes to MS directly instead of their competitors.
 
This seems a bit misleading to me... The only way in the past to get the Enterprise version of windows has been to have "SA" (Software Assurance) with Microsoft. This sounds like pretty much the same thing to me, just renamed, possibly with some extra perks actually. Got to love the sensationalism in media these days.
 
Canon said:
This seems a bit misleading to me... The only way in the past to get the Enterprise version of windows has been to have "SA" (Software Assurance) with Microsoft. This sounds like pretty much the same thing to me, just renamed, possibly with some extra perks actually. Got to love the sensationalism in media these days.
Click to expand...
And we have a winner!
 
That's $7/mo. Now, since this is "per user", you could have as many machines as you wanted as long as you controlled your user allocation, I assume.

What's a Windows license cost? $150 for Win8 Enterprise.

Assuming you upgrade a lot and do it every 2 years, that's $75/yr. It's all going to come down to how it pans as enterprise is usually SA/VL agreements.

Not sure how enterprise will like Win10. I run the enterprise version of it and I'm in the test program / slow channel. One thing I find frustrating is every update resets a lot of my settings and brings back apps I uninstalled (like the "Get Office" app). I can imagine service packs (or whatever the equivalent for Win10 is) will do the same thing. It also tends to break drivers on a version to version basis (like my scanner) - granted, I'd expect less of that outside of the test builds.
 
Spidey329 said:
That's $7/mo. Now, since this is "per user", you could have as many machines as you wanted as long as you controlled your user allocation, I assume.

What's a Windows license cost? $150 for Win8 Enterprise.

Assuming you upgrade a lot and do it every 2 years, that's $75/yr. It's all going to come down to how it pans as enterprise is usually SA/VL agreements.

Not sure how enterprise will like Win10. I run the enterprise version of it and I'm in the test program / slow channel. One thing I find frustrating is every update resets a lot of my settings and brings back apps I uninstalled (like the "Get Office" app). I can imagine service packs (or whatever the equivalent for Win10 is) will do the same thing. It also tends to break drivers on a version to version basis (like my scanner) - granted, I'd expect less of that outside of the test builds.
Click to expand...

no windows 8 enterprise wasn't $150. Pro was $199. Enterprise has only ever been available if you pay for a volume license of Pro then pay for software assurance to get any updated versions.
 
This completely depends on your business model and upgrade cycle. For most of my enterprise experiences this doesn't make financial sense versus the way we were operating with volume licensing, internal support staff already in place, and support warranties for hardware.

Spidey329 said:
Not sure how enterprise will like Win10. I run the enterprise version of it and I'm in the test program / slow channel. One thing I find frustrating is every update resets a lot of my settings and brings back apps I uninstalled (like the "Get Office" app). I can imagine service packs (or whatever the equivalent for Win10 is) will do the same thing. It also tends to break drivers on a version to version basis (like my scanner) - granted, I'd expect less of that outside of the test builds.
Click to expand...

At my previous job we / they were completely planning on skipping it. We're a charity that works with government entities and a lot of the software we use / driver support is not there yet for Windows 10. It's something we had end users asking about all the time, but we had to tell them they were stuck with 8.1.

At my current job, they actually rolled out 10 through SCCM to everyone who hadn't already updated over this past weekend. The funny thing is they didn't update the display drivers or notice that it reset all of the default audio devices. This doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but our tech support area had a bunch of users with screens that kept flashing and headsets that didn't work, but computers that kept ringing through the speakers. It was honestly pretty funny. I ended up going over there and helping about 10 people get their computers working again.
 
Lakados said:
The E3 and E5 bundles do include Azure AD, and hosted exchange as well as One Drive for each registered user. E5 also grants access to skype pro and Lync services both include Office 365. And full phone support, have enough users and the cost comes down substantially. I have a meeting with accounting at the end of the week about signing a 5 year agreement for the E3 bundle for over 500 users. The cost savings on Data backups alone grants a positive net return on the contract, let alone server refreshes.
Click to expand...

We use the E3 plus a few Skype for Business Conferencing subscriptions for guys that host a lot of online meetings. I think we are handling our OS licensing somewhat differently. That is not my department. I just know I have a bunch of keys for different OS's when I bring them online.
 
Spidey329 said:
That's $7/mo. Now, since this is "per user", you could have as many machines as you wanted as long as you controlled your user allocation, I assume.

What's a Windows license cost? $150 for Win8 Enterprise.

Assuming you upgrade a lot and do it every 2 years, that's $75/yr. It's all going to come down to how it pans as enterprise is usually SA/VL agreements.

Not sure how enterprise will like Win10. I run the enterprise version of it and I'm in the test program / slow channel. One thing I find frustrating is every update resets a lot of my settings and brings back apps I uninstalled (like the "Get Office" app). I can imagine service packs (or whatever the equivalent for Win10 is) will do the same thing. It also tends to break drivers on a version to version basis (like my scanner) - granted, I'd expect less of that outside of the test builds.
Click to expand...
Hey there Spidey if you are having problems with the Get Office and other such apps coming back what I did was create a GPO that basically ran this the fist time an Admin logs into a machine after it is freshly domained. (If you are not running a domain then you can just run it on its own)


Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | where-object {$_.name –notlike “*store*”} | Remove-AppxPackage
Get-appxprovisionedpackage –online | where-object {$_.packagename –notlike “*store*”} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online

Those commands when run from the PowerShell as an admin will get rid of everything except the windows store for all current and future users.
 
I still can not believe people would give a dime to microsoft. get a KMS server it will save you $$$. Reversed engineered activation server. google it.
 
So this would work out to 10.08M/year for Shared Services Canada (SSC) to fork out over my employer's pool of 120,000 active users (Canadian Dept of National Defence (DND) ). I don't see my dept moving off Win 7 anytime soon until their current level enterprise support is canned. Then again.. DND/SSC is forking out over $500M to IBM/Bell for a new unclassified data centre and its associated WAN connections at CFB Borden JUST for the exchange email upgrade - so I think this $10.08M estimate is definitely palatable chunk of change for Windows 10 seats down the road if Microsoft includes 24/7 Tier III+ support.

Now if SSC along with Microsoft can figure out not to deploy patches that bugger up its already crappy MSIE 11 Enterprise browser (which is an absolute piece of shit browser - but it's the only thing in town that is easily controlled and locked down by the Forest wide GPOs).

Damn glad and grateful for my IT rep who deals with the DND IT/IS world :) - I am busy enough as one of the 3 bosses at the 'office' and don't have much time anymore for debugging computer or the backhaul link problems between my sites.
 
acidrain97 said:
I still can not believe people would give a dime to microsoft. get a KMS server it will save you $$$. Reversed engineered activation server. google it.
Click to expand...

LOL, sure if you are running a small business operation and will never call Microsoft (and don't get caught) - or you are trying before you buy setting up a test environment and save a little bit on deployment issues/costs. Windows 10 Enterprise is geared towards MASSIVE operations (i.e. Fortune 500 companies, governments, military, etc) who's IT departments need access to 24/7 critical support and require a common software baseline - and IMHO I think its not a bad deal.

On my home machines I am contemplating on moving them off Windows to a Linux flavor now that Netflix is HTML5 - but I would NEVER recommend Linux at my work unless it was for a very niche standalone requirement.
 
Thanks to the wonderful world of the US tax code, a license you own is an asset that must be depreciated over time and possibly owe property tax on depending on which state you are in. A license you rent is a deduction against income. Plus this does solve the version upgrade issue a lot of places have. Having a mix of Win XP, 7, Vista, 8.x and 10 is a PITA. The last state govt agency I worked at just used the OEM version that came on the new computers for the OS license plus we purchased CALs to cover the server connections. Which meant we had the PITA situation. At the time, buying an OS enterprise agreement was going to be a $100,000+ item with no credit for the OEM licenses we already had. So $42,000 for the about 500 users we had would be a significant discount.
 
AK0tA said:
I would not be willing to pay for broken crap but I will take it for free and tweak the crap out. One could go the linux route and not have this issue and just be done with it.
Click to expand...

M76 said:
What? Pay for windows 10? Why would I pay for it when I didn't want it for free?

As for subscriptions, I'd never sign up. Windows is not a service. It's software, that I should be able to buy once and use forever.
Click to expand...

I get the distinct impression that neither of you have ever worked in an Enterprise environment. For the type of service and support that comes with this, at face value this is a very good value for business.

As for those mentioning things like reverse engineered activation servers and such..You are Fucking Stupid to put it mildly. That kind of shit will get you in extremely serious trouble if caught. Home piracy is one thing, doing it inside a business is an entirely different thing. If you are pirating software for a business you need to be Fired and barred from ever working in IT.
 
Hate to tell most of you but most people using an enterprise version of windows have been paying subscription fees for a while now under the name of software assurance.
 
Maybe $5 a month. If they do a subscription model, I think it should come with Office 365, cloud storage, and why not toss in anti-malware software. If I didn't play games, I'd be using Linux. It does everything else I need to do. (Yes, I know there are some Steam games - but not enough for me to switch yet).
 
steakman1971 said:
Maybe $5 a month. If they do a subscription model, I think it should come with Office 365, cloud storage, and why not toss in anti-malware software. If I didn't play games, I'd be using Linux. It does everything else I need to do. (Yes, I know there are some Steam games - but not enough for me to switch yet).
Click to expand...

Enterprise is NOT for home use. This doesn't apply to you in the slightest.
 
acidrain97 said:
I still can not believe people would give a dime to microsoft. get a KMS server it will save you $$$. Reversed engineered activation server. google it.
Click to expand...
So you are encouraging businesses to infringe on Microsoft's copyright and have the threat of legal action taken against them? No sane business will do this and most if not all of them do comply with licensing agreements. This has nothing to do with the Windows 10 "Home".
 
acidrain97 said:
I still can not believe people would give a dime to microsoft. get a KMS server it will save you $$$. Reversed engineered activation server. google it.
Click to expand...

What kind of business risks legal action to save 90/PC/year? Risk is far greater than the reward. All it takes is having one employee with knowledge of your illegal activities to turn you in and you're going to owe MS more than you saved. And yes, ex employees do turn in their old companies.
 
rezerekted said:
Tin foil hat on: Shades of things to come for all Win10 converts.
Click to expand...

2015: "lol tinfoil hat much, Windows 10 subscriptions will never happen"

2016: "Okay well Windows 10 non-enterprise subscriptions will never happen"

2017: "Okay well Windows 10 subscriptions are a great way for everyone to get Windows 10 and the Magic of the Windows Store™, plus 2-in-1's and Surface-as-a-Service are wonderful, just amazing and folks love them."
 
acidrain97 said:
I still can not believe people would give a dime to microsoft. get a KMS server it will save you $$$. Reversed engineered activation server. google it.
Click to expand...

Any company doing that is just asking to be sued out of business.

Lucky, Microsoft's licensing is easy for me.
I work for a software development company, and as part of our partnership agreement with Microsoft, they provide us with production enterprise licenses to most of their products. They currently give us about twice as many desktop and office licenses than we have employees. Plus development has their own set of licenses for testing. Saves us a huge amount of money since I don't have to pay for latest versions of Exchange, DPM, SharePoint, SQL, Remote Desktop, etc. as long as I stay within the license count.
 
DPI said:
2015: "lol tinfoil hat much, Windows 10 subscriptions will never happen"

2016: "Okay well Windows 10 non-enterprise subscriptions will never happen"

2017: "Okay well Windows 10 subscriptions are a great way for everyone to get Windows 10 and the Magic of the Windows Store™, plus 2-in-1's and Surface-as-a-Service are wonderful, just amazing and folks love them."
Click to expand...

LOL! Nope. Enterprise subs have long been thought to be happening, much like Office 365 which is doing well in the enterprise where SA is essentially already a sub. This are totally different in the consumer space where no one is going to pay a subs simply to be able to use the device they bought. As you've said many times, Microsoft can't give 10 away for free, how in the world would they be able to charge a sub for it?
 
DPI said:
2015: "lol tinfoil hat much, Windows 10 subscriptions will never happen"

2016: "Okay well Windows 10 non-enterprise subscriptions will never happen"

2017: "Okay well Windows 10 subscriptions are a great way for everyone to get Windows 10 and the Magic of the Windows Store™, plus 2-in-1's and Surface-as-a-Service are wonderful, just amazing and folks love them."
Click to expand...
Has there been a non-subscription version of Enterprise? I was under the impression that Enterprise was always sold that way. I know that's how it was at the companies I've worked at (for Windows in general in that case...not using 10 at work, so far)
 
I would pay 25 a year to be able to still get win 7.

I would also pay 10 a year if my damn neighbors would keep their dogs from crapping in my yard!!!
 
Dekoth-E- said:
I get the distinct impression that neither of you have ever worked in an Enterprise environment. For the type of service and support that comes with this, at face value this is a very good value for business.

.
Click to expand...
Sorry I only speak for myself as a home user. And right now only the enterprise version of windows 10 is acceptable to me, with less restrictions than any of the home versions.

As for corporate we have a subscription so we could install windows 10 from day one after release, yet none of our computers run windows 10 even today. And I'm not in charge of IT anymore thankfully, so it's not up to me and my hate of w10.

Actually it's not hate. I don't hate windows 10 because of arbitrary reasons. I just took a look at it's pros and cons what it brings to the table and what it takes away, and come to the conclusion that it's inferior to Windows 7. It's a purely objective conclusion no emotion involved.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top