Microsoft Drops Windows Home Server Prices For OEMs

Although by almost any measure its first year has been a success, Microsoft announced a 30% drop in the Windows Home Server licenses price for OEMs last week on the Windows Home Server team blog. That means that VARs and vendors, such as HP with their MediaSmart servers, will pay less for the software. It also means the street price – what you could expect to pay in a retail store – will likely drop as well.

It’s tough to pinpoint exactly what a high-volume vendor like HP is paying per Windows Home Server license, but it should be interesting to see what downward pressure this will have on the pricing of their popular MediaSmart servers, with a base MSRP of around $550.

For their part Microsoft seems to be claiming that the price drop doesn’t have anything to do with slow sales and I believe them – everything I’ve seen indicates that Windows Home Server has actually been quite successful. My guess is that Microsoft sees this as a good opportunity to make a push to get devices running the server software into as many homes as possible. The home server market it still in its early landgrab phases, and Microsoft wants to make sure they have as big a slice of that pie as possible. Mmmmm, pie.