Microsoft will change the prices of its cloud services only once a year

Did you know that the price you pay for services such as Office 365 or Microsoft’s cloud storage depends not only on the company, but also on the value of the dollar? Microsoft has just announced an important change: from now on, it will only adjust the prices of its cloud services once a year, instead of twice as it has done up to now. That is, on 1 January of each year it will update prices in euros, pounds and other currencies according to the exchange rate with the dollar.And why does this matter to us? Because more and more people and small businesses use cloud services to work, store files or use apps such as Teams or the Office suite. With the new system, prices will be more predictable: you will know what you are going to pay for the whole year. The downside is that, if the euro loses value against the dollar, you’ll have to pay more for twelve months in a row, with no possibility for Microsoft to adjust it sooner. The company assures that this provides “greater predictability”, but it also admits that there will be exceptions in extreme cases.In practice, this means it is worth keeping an eye on the exchange rate at the end of the year, because what happens with the dollar in November will determine what we pay for the whole following year. For those who use these services daily, it is a reminder that, although the cloud may seem like something ethereal, its prices are very tied to the real economy.— Marta, for inteligencia intermitente.