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Microsoft Announces Surface as a Service, Windows 10 Enterprise E3 for $7 Per User Per Month (zdnet.com)
Mary Jo Foley, reporting for ZDNet: Microsoft plans to make its recently renamed Windows 10 Enterprise product available as a subscription for $7 per user per month, or $84 per year. Microsoft took the wraps off the pricing of one of the two renamed versions of Windows 10 Enterprise at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto on July 12. Windows 10 Enterprise E3 is the name of the lower-end of two different versions of Windows 10 Enterprise. Windows 10 Enterprise E5 is the new name of the Windows 10 Enterprise version that also will include Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, a new Microsoft service for detecting and responding to attacks. Microsoft announced the renaming of Windows 10 Enterprise last week, and said the E3 and E5 versions will also be available as part of "Secure Productive Enterprise" bundles.Microsoft also announced a subscription service for Surface tablet. The company says that its Cloud Solution Providers and Surface Authorized Distributors can now sell Surface as a Service.
So no shock here... windows as a service for 3x the price you used to pay. Nice move Micro$oft.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Nothing has changed. Microsoft has had this type of licensing in place for Enterprise before now. Adding a subscription to Home and Pro would be a major change. But if they threw it into O365 it would actually be a good change, just as long as they still a purchasable copy that doesn't have a recurring fee.
For everyone who swore up and down that Windows 10 will never be a subscription and Microsoft will always stick with their old business model (pay once for the OS, additional support by subscription): hope the crow is tasty!
You gotta admit, whne the shills start trying to claim that Microsoft's subcription service really isnt a subscription service, it will be horrorshow fun.
Now the question is if they'll turn the 'Home' and 'Pro' editions into subscriptions as well. It's clearly not beneath them, it's only a question if their execs determine that the hostage revenues will outweigh the massive bad will backlash they'll receive.
It isn't a question of "if". If they are doing Surface as a service, there is no reason why everything won't be a "service' soon. So after say the 5 year lifetime of your computer, you'll have paid 420 dollars - not a bad deal eh? And we'd have to be fools to think that it won't soon rise to 10 dollars a month in short order.
What I wonder about however, is Windows 10 networks that aren't conneced to the internetz such as some I administer. Will an update have a kill switch or something, so that I'm not robbing them of their rightful money?
Regardless, looking forward to the shills tapdancing this into the best thing that ever happened to computing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Home and Pro have no sign of moving to a subscription plan at this point.
Are you sure? Does it need to be in 150-foot tall neon for it to qualify as a "sign"?
Given the direction they've taken consumer and enterprise Office, the newly announced enterprise Windows subscriptions, and the claim that "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows", what other conclusion can be made? And on top of that, desktop sales have slowed as newer machines tend to last users a lot longer than they historically did. With all this in mind I think it's entirely reasonable to deduce that within a year or two all editions of Windows will be sold via subscription.
The real question is what they will do with existing installations. Will there be a year or two grace period after which point your license expires and will require a subscription renewal? Or will they allow existing licenses to continue in perpetuity? Will offline installation still be possible or will yearly renewals be required via phone for disconnected machines? Either way, Microsoft will probably price it such that they even claim it's a "savings" because the "average user" would have spent more to upgrade Windows every two years than they will in subscription fees.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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The actual writing on the wall is that the home (and school) computing markets have become Chromebook markets. For Microsoft to compete there, they need to move their entire application stack into the cloud (which they've already done a great deal of). Then strip down Windows into a form that can be auto-upgraded behind the scenes like Chromebooks can.
There may remain a market for traditional Windows desktops, but it's a shrinking one. Microsoft already has enough of a strangle hold there to keep it, but it's losing the Chromebook market - and they don't like to lose. They'll make Windows available for traditional desktop PC's - and maybe they'll sell some kind of subscription service for upgrades, but ultimately PC OS upgrades are going to go away - in the sense that they'll be 'hidden and automatic' like on Chromebooks, or 'free and automatic' with a subscription on PC's - or just free as in "we can't sell upgrades any more, and it's more trouble than it's worth to continue to support old versions, so...".
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...