Hewlett Packard Enterprise has changed its pricing policy and will now honour quoted hardware prices from the day of issue until the kit leaves its factories.

The new policy came into effect on Wednesday.

The back story to this change is the AI boom, which has seen demand for servers, memory, and storage skyrocket, and the prices for critical components rise steadily while also fluctuating from day to day. That chaotic situation saw HPE and other enterprise hardware players change policies so that the price in their quotes was only valid for 14 days. Cisco’s terms were sometimes set at seven days.

That’s obviously difficult for buyers, who often seek a quote for hardware while they are building a business case for a new project. Big price changes could make those projects infeasible.

Yet short-lived quotes also make sense for vendors, who could otherwise give buyers prices that they could only deliver at a loss.

In June, HPE extended the life of its quotes from 14 to 30 days.

Yesterday, the company changed the policy so that quotes that customers agree to remain valid until HPE ships products – at least for purchases of up to $1 million for its own Compute, Storage and GreenLake Flex deals. CRN was first to report the change, which The Register has verified.

HPE says it gives “customers and partners greater pricing certainty and will offer greater simplicity and predictability” – and perhaps for months, because lead times for servers sometimes stretch that far into the future.

The company hasn’t said what has changed to allow it to revise its policies.

Recent news suggests one possible factor: Memory-makers Micron and SK Hynix have struck numerous long-term deals that set long-term prices for their customers. If HPE has such deals in place, it now has greater certainty of its own costs, allowing it to extend the validity of its quotes.

While longer-lived quotes are good news for buyers, they still face inflated prices for hardware. Analyst firm TrendForce recently predicted server memory prices will rise between 13 and 18 percent in calendar Q3, and ongoing tight supply. Rival firm Gartner this week found contract DRAM prices “surged” 90 percent to 95 percent quarter over quarter in the first half of 2026, while NAND flash contract prices rose between 55 and 60 percent.

Gartner also predicted DRAM prices will increase 271 percent, year over year, during 2026.

So while HPE will hold its prices, its quotes may still be eye-poppers if you haven't shopped for hardware lately. ®