If it feels like enterprise software pricing is shifting under your feet, you’re not imagining things.
In recent months, several tech heavyweights, including Google, Adobe, and Salesforce, have aggressively cut pricing to secure multiyear, high-volume deals with US federal agencies. Google’s landmark Workspace deal, brokered through the General Services Administration (GSA), slashes prices by up to 71 percent compared to previous agreements, offering savings in the ballpark of $2 billion over three years. Adobe is reportedly offering similar discounts on its digital document and workflow tools.
This week, Salesforce joined the race, offering a 90 percent markdown on Slack Enterprise Grid to help the US government consolidate its collaboration stack, while Slack AI for Enterprise is also on the table for government customers at a roughly 70 percent discount.
This trend is partly facilitated by politics. The Trump administration has pushed for a centralised federal tech procurement strategy to cut costs, reduce vendor duplication, and boost operational efficiency across departments. But it’s also strategic. These tech firms are playing the long game, locking in sprawling, multi-agency deals in the world’s largest public sector market.
But while the deals are focused on the US government, the ripple effects will likely be felt far beyond. What’s being revealed here is the fundamental elasticity of software pricing in 2025.
Elastic by Design: SaaS and UC Pricing in 2025
The sheer scale of these discounts signals something many in the industry have long suspected: software pricing today, especially in SaaS, unified communications, and collaboration, is far more fluid than fixed.
In 2025, we’re witnessing the steady decline of rigid, per-seat licensing and the rise of usage-based and value-driven pricing models. SaaS vendors are adjusting to more transparent, scalable structures that better reflect how modern organisations consume services. According to Invesp, most leading SaaS companies now offer usage-based pricing in some form.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of AI has accelerated this trend. High-performance models require substantial infrastructure, making traditional flat pricing less sustainable. OpenAI and other AI-first vendors are embracing metered billing to better align costs with real-world usage and outcomes.
At the same time, midmarket software firms are being squeezed. AI-native disruptors and hyperscale cloud providers are scaling customer expectations around value and cost, putting pressure on legacy providers to either innovate or slash prices.
Seen through this lens, the discounts handed to government buyers aren’t just about the Trump administration’s bargaining power. They’re a byproduct of an evolving pricing ecosystem in which elasticity is the rule, not the exception.
What It Means for Tech Leaders and Buyers
So, where does this leave IT leaders and procurement heads who aren’t negotiating in the hallowed halls of Capitol Hill?
For one, it means traditional assumptions about pricing power need updating.
Now, it’s key to highlight that government agencies have long been eligible for and benefited from significant tech discounts, but these tended to be spread across multiple agencies. By centralising tech procurement, the US government now has even greater purchasing power. Naturally, not every large enterprise or broader public sector organisation can secure a 90 percent discount without the immense carrot-and-stick leverage of a body as powerful and wealthy as the US government.
However, this elasticity trend suggests meaningful room for discussion, especially for large organisations consolidating tools across departments or investing long term in a particular platform. If vendors can offer steep markdowns without compromising on service levels or features, it suggests that the sticker price can be less of a reflection of cost and potentially more of a starting point for negotiation.
It also underscores the importance of looking beyond price. In a more elastic environment, value takes centre stage. That includes things like bundled AI features, tighter integrations, better support, and future roadmap alignment. The priority should be about extracting more from your investment over the contract’s life rather than simply getting a lower number on the invoice.
As software pricing becomes more flexible, procurement strategies should be changing, too. Locking in rigid multiyear contracts without usage audits, renegotiation clauses, or performance guarantees could expose organisations to unnecessary risk or leave money on the table.
A Smarter Way Forward
This moment is less a pricing crisis than an opportunity for everybody to recalibrate. The deals struck by the US government are a kind of transparency signal illustrating just how far software vendors are willing to go when the stakes are high and the buyers are strategic.
For IT leaders, this is the time to revisit procurement playbooks, lean into value-led vendor relationships, and treat pricing not as a given but as a lever that can be utilised to drive outcomes that authentically serve the organisation.
Whether you’re in the public or private sector, software pricing is arguably no longer a fixed cost but a strategic conversation.
