0 Microsoft cutting another 800 jobs

Microsoft Corp. is eliminating 800 jobs worldwide, including several dozen in Massachusetts, as part of a larger effort to cut costs and increase efficiency, a spokesman said yesterday.

The software giant has nearly 1,000 employees in the state and expects to cut less than 4 percent of the local workforce, or fewer than 40 jobs.

The cuts are in addition to 5,000 positions that in January Microsoft said it would eliminate.

The company originally expected to complete that downsizing by June 2010, but a spokesman said yesterday that those jobs were already mostly gone. Once the cuts are complete, the company will have a global workforce of about 88,000. (www.boston.com)

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0 Microsoft chops price of its hosted software

 Microsoft said Monday that it's cutting by a third the subscription prices for the hosted versions of Exchange, Sharepoint, and Office Communications Server.

The software maker plans to cut the monthly per-user cost of licensing all three products from $15 to $10, while the cost of licensing individual products is also dropping by as much as 50 percent. The move comes as Microsoft faces continued pressure from rivals, including Google.

Last week, the city of Los Angeles voted to go ahead with a deal to shift many employees to Google Apps from Microsoft Office.

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