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.

Comments

Hope the crow is tasty

[LichtSpektren]

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!

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.

Re:Hope the crow is tasty

[thoromyr]

I suspect that instead of MS choosing over "pay once" vs "subscription" they will introduce it as a "cost saving alternative" to "reduce the up front cost" of maintaining your operating system. Instead of paying $200 (or whatever) for an OEM copy it will be $5/mo. Then they can insist they are simply providing more options.

To move into complete subscription mode they will transition the "legacy free support" model to "ad supported" with the option to pay a subscription fee in order to eliminate (or at least reduce) the advertising.

I'm okay with it being rented

[DoofusOfDeath]

I don't mind if Windows 10 Pro is rented, per se. If the PC market is slowing, it strikes me as a reasonable way to fund (and incent) continued security patches and bug-fixes. I.e., make Microsoft re-earn my business every 6-12 months. After all, I can always migrate away at my leisure before the rental agreement expires.

However, I do object to other aspects of Windows 10, that if anything I would expect to get worse under such a model:

* An EULA that gives Microsoft unfettered access to all of my data, and using it in whatever way they see fit.

* The inability to assess each proposed patch, and to choose if/when to apply it.

* The inability to prevent Windows 10 from phoning home for reasons I'm prevented from knowing.

If it were just the rental cost, the cost/benefit analysis for my wife's photography business would be easy. But the snooping, and particular the risk of uncontrollable, unpreventable, unnecessary downtime on her production computers... that risk is unacceptable even if Windows 10 were perpetually free (as in beer).

I really don't look forward to the cost of migrating her photo-editing workstation to a sufficiently powerful Mac. But we'll probably need to find a way.

Re:Rent-Seeking

[Ol Olsoc]

Not to worry, citizen! Your OS and Tablet will be automatically upgraded by Microsoft to a subscription model, for your convenience!

No. Just no. Stop perpetuating this. While Microsoft has made many missteps with Win10, this isn't one of them. Yet. Enterprise was never free to upgrade. It was always a product available only through volume licensing, usually with Software Assurance, which is a yearly fee.

I notice that you conveniently forgot Surface. Tell me, do the same reasons aplpy to it as W10 Enterprise?

At what point does the truth become the truth? You can shill all you want, but the Cassandras, of which I am one, have pretty much nailed everything that you people say wasn't happening or going to happen. It phones home to mysterious places, it keylogs, it has your passwords and gives them to anyone on the social networks of people who you allow to access your computer. And it ignores hostfiles for the special places it reports to. And wordsmithing will get you nowhere on this.

And here we have the first shots across the bow of the predicted and inevitible subscription service to Windows ten. Just like we Cassandras said would happen. It takes either monumental stupidity, pathological dissembling, or a paycheck to deny it at this point. This Cassandra says it is coming to all versions of W10. So No! you just stop it. It isn't FUD when everything you call FUD is provable truth or so obviously going to happen that it makes no discernable difference.