Tuesday 25 August 2009 - markwilson.it

Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, et. al. please take note that the US Dollar price for your product multiplied at the current exchange rate, plus 15% value added tax (UK sales tax at today’s rate) is a lot less than the price you charge us for your software.

For example:

The Apple Snow Leopard 10.6 update announced today is $29 in the US or Â£17.67 at the current exchange rate, plus 15% VAT bringing it to just over Â£20. But Apple thinks the UK consumer can stump up an extra 20% and pay Â£25. It may only be a fiver but the same principle applies across the entire product range.
Microsoft’s Windows 7 Ultimate Edition Upgrade (there will now be an upgrade version of Windows 7 in Europe) costs $219 (which works out at Â£133.48). Add the sales tax and we’re up to just over Â£150 but Microsoft wants UK customers to pay Â£199!

A 20-25% uplift is pretty bad (and the VAT will be back to at least 17.5% at the end of January 2010) but Apple and Microsoft are clearly not pushing this as far as they can… let’s look at what Adobe charges:

Adobe Photoshop CS4 is $699 in the States (which is Â£373.03, or Â£428.98 if we include the VAT) but, get this, Adobe charges us Â£615.25 – that’s almost a 45% premium… it’s a good job they’re offering free shipping at the moment if I spend more than Â£350.

Just to be clear, I didn’t deliberately pick the most expensive products to make software vendors look bad. These are the latest operating system releases from Apple/Microsoft and probably Adobe’s best-known product. No wonder the UK is the third-most expensive country in the world.

Last month, when Windows Server 2008 R2 was released to manufacturing, Microsoft promised that System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 would be released within 60-days. I doubted it would take that long (especially as a Microsoft spokesperson had mistakenly told me that it had already been released) and, earlier today, Microsoft announced the release to manufacturing of SCVMM 2008 R2, with generally availability in October (in plenty of time for Windows Server 2008 R2 GA).

As well as supporting new functionality in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, SCVMM 2008 R2 can be used to manage VMware vSphere 4 hosts.

To learn more about the product’s capabilities, check out the technical overview webcast that Microsoft is running next month or download an evaluation copy and more information is available on the SCVMM 2008 R2 website.