British businesses to pay more for Microsoft Office following pound slump

Post-EU referendum slide in value of pound to blame for Microsoft's UK price rises, expected to be up to 13% for software and 22% for cloud-based services

Microsoft will increase the prices it charges British businesses by up to 22% to account for the slump in the value of the pound following the EU referendum result, the software company has announced.

The new prices, which will come into effect in January 2017, see the amounts expected for locally hosted software increase by 13%, while "most" cloud-hosted services will increase by the full 22%, the company said in a statement. While once programs like Microsoft's Office suite were installed locally on PCs, in recent years the cloud-based subscription version, Office 365, has become increasingly popular.