Telstra drops Office 365 price by 20 percent

Price cuts take effect May 1.

Telstra will reduce the price of its Microsoft Office 365 services by between 20 and 30 percent from May 1.

The price drops were revealed to Telstra's T-Suite partners and reported by Box-Free IT. They coincide with Microsoft's pricing changes for Australian users who purchase the cloud software suite directly from the giant.

Last month, Microsoft cut its US Office 365 prices by between $US1 ($A0.95) and $US5 a user a month, depending on the product tier. Like Telstra, Microsoft planned to introduce the price cuts in Australia on May 1.

Telstra has traditionally maintained a significant price premium of between 40 and 76 percent for local users over the US version of the service since its initial launch last June.

Following the price cuts announced by Microsoft last month, Telstra prices were in some cases double that of the US despite a strong local dollar.

A Telstra spokesman declined to disclose the exact value of the price cuts but said they would likely be "between 20 and 30 percent".

Both instances of the software -- sold by Microsoft and through Telstra's T-Suite offering -- are hosted from the software giant's Singapore data centre.