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Can Microsoft Really Convince People To Subscribe To Software?
curtwoodward writes "For most consumers, monthly subscriptions are still something for magazines and cable TV. With Office 365, Microsoft is about to embark on a huge social experiment to see if they'll also pay that way for basic software. But in doing so, Microsoft has jacked up prices on its old fee structure to make subscriptions seem like a better deal. And that could really leave a bad impression with financially struggling consumers."
The icon was the Borg Gates, now it is just a word.
If they are already getting monthly/yearly fees from customers, what's the incentive to produce good products? Now we get to vote by not buying that version and continuing to use an old one. With this new model they'll get money either way.
Their hard core users will probably pay, but many people are occasional users. Free and/or cheaper products will make out big on this. Word processing and spreadsheets aren't exactly cutting edge applications anymore.
As a soho business that deals with PII (personally identifiable information) I'm unable to advantage of any kind of cloud based office suite. The risk should any of that information be released accidently by Cloud Office is financial ruin due to fines, possible prison and being made an example by the Feds for violating while MS gets off with no risk. Sorry Charlie but it aint going to happen.
If the price of Windows and Office climbs to high, I'll have no choice but to move the entire business over to Open Source solutions just to stay in business. As far as document exchange go, I'm already using PDF as my base format. If the customer can't read it, then I wont do anymore business with them as everyone has a PDF reader available (Adobe Reader on Windows and native support on Apple). Solves the problem and I don't have to worry about them being able to edit/change anything w/o my being able to prove it. CYA man, CYA.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Interesting idea - that the document applications are basically mature, and not much more is needed/desired on the part of users.
In a world like that, you would expect development of new office suits to slow, and the department sizes to shrink. Ongoing development for the trickle of new features and bugs that need to be corrected, but on a much smaller scale than originally. Same as with operating systems.
I think maybe it is unreasonable to assume that a company in an expanding market would forever grow or even never contract. Surely as computers become ubiquitous, the purchases will only be for replacements, which one would expect would be lower than the peak where new units and replacements were being purchased.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Back in 1998 one of my colleagues expressed a favorable attitude towards the pay per view technology being marketed by Circuit City as Divx. I gasped and suggested an analogy of having to pay Microsoft a dime every time you used MS word or even worse, every time you saved a document. While not the same as subscriptions the concept is similar.
Office is deeply entrenched in the business world so this move could be a financial bonanza for Microsoft until the business world rebelled. Lotus Notes (Which IMNSHO sucks big green donkey dicks.) could replace Outlook and the Lotus suite of apps based on Open Office could replace the balance of Office. Courageous management would dump commercial software and go with Open Office or Libre Office.
Big challenges are user training and finding a replacement with the same kind of email and calendar integration that Outlook offers. I work for a large tech company. Being able to schedule meetings and conference calls, and getting reminders of same makes the work day flow smoothly. At least until your exchange server becomes unreachable.
We need a Darth Balmer icon for Slashdot.
It's not just migrating the office suite, it's everything. At school every major piece of software I use (Matlab, MathCAD, & Solidworks) integrates with Excel. This means that to migrate away from MS Office I have to have all three of these programs work with the replacement. Good luck getting people to migrate until you have that compatibility. This does seem to be something that I don't see brought up all that often, and yes it is important.
Dude, you are seriously confused.
I mean we hear constant screams about MSFT having too much cruft and backwards compatibility holding things back...
The screams about backwards compatibility holding things back must be in your head? I don't hear them.
I doubt very seriously you'd get anything but word salad if you tried to open the latest LO ODF files on OO.o 1.0
Your point is asinine. Why would anyone run an antique version of a free software suite when the newest version is only a download (or a free mailed CD) away?
Software gets new and nifty features, no-one says that this is a bad thing. Proprietary software houses, however, essentially run an upgrade racket driven by incompatible new formats. Some are worse than MS, Adobe, for instance, offers no way to save in older formats and sneakily "upgrades" older files when opened in a newer version. CS4 even did this without the user having saved the document. My brother, who uses a Macbook, constantly mailed me docx-files with schedules for conversion when in university as his professor refused to save in an older format, and the tables used didn't show up in free suites. When confronted about this, the professor wasn't even aware that this could be an issue, and he told my brother that he "didn't have time" for pandering to students on off-brand devices. Nobody wins but Microsoft in such a situation.
For OSS this is never an issue as upgrades are free. The problem is that proprietary software upgrades will always incur significant costs. If you can't even admit that this is a serious advantage of open source, and one that can even be decisive for certain users, you are deluded. It dawns on me that you are likely a strong fanboy or even a paid shill, in which case you will admit to no arguments against your loyalties, and my post is wasted.
The fact that they even gave you a compatibility pack at all was more than the other guys, so maybe if you need it that bad you might want to just pick up a copy of something from this decade, yes?
"More than the other guys?" How on Earth can you say that with a straight face? The "other guys" give you their whole fucking product for free... Yup, astroturfing confirmed.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!