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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?
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.
...to be followed by truly heart-felt apologies and the addition of a "No Thanks" widget that will immediately initiate the upgrade.
Hmm....I'm not sure how well received this will be in the private corp world, but I'm pretty sure in the Federal Govt world, especially DoD and maybe VA with sensitive, classified or privacy patient data, this isn't going to go over too well, especially the potentially always external connected part.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
To all those Microsoft fanbois who said affirmatively that Microsoft was not planning a subscription model for Windows 10, please explain once again how Microsoft would never institute a subscription model for Windows 10.
Simple - it will be renamed to Windows Overlord Edition. So it won't be Windows 10.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
Home and Pro have no sign of moving to a subscription plan at this point. That might change some day, but there's no sign of it yet.
Like last week's "revelation" that the latest Win10 build includes some SUBSCRIPTIONTHING.EXE and folks like you coming out of the woodwork to say "I told you so", despite Microsoft very, very clearly explaining that the file had nothing to do with Pro/Home installs and was purely for Enterprise, the FUD is getting annoying. I'm no fanboy, but to date, your suggesting has no basis in fact.
"Oh no... he found the
I work for one of Microsoft's major (probably biggest) 'partners corporations', and I'd be honestly shocked if they went along with a 'subscription' model; I'd think it'd be more along the lines of, "You either give us one-shot enterprise licensing like always, or maybe we stop supporting your software with our hardware"
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
..linux..
Haven't you been paying attention? Microsoft has been dabbling in Linux now, too. Clearly they want to own all operating systems for all devices. They're probably just consolidating their resources and forces as much as possilble before attacking Apple. Microsoft has always wanted to be a monopoly, and nothing has changed. They of course have to be stopped, broken up into smaller chunks (again), and in general smacked on the nose with a newspaper (again) and have it made clear to them that they do not own people's devices, and they will not be allowed to have a monopoly and stifle all competition. Personally I'd rather have NO computer than have any version of Windows anymore, entirely because of their behavior.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Home and Pro have no sign of moving to a subscription plan at this point. That might change some day, but there's no sign of it yet.
That is only because they don't have the requisite datacenters built. Yet.
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...
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.
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The actual writing on the wall is that the home (and school) computing markets have become Chromebook markets.
The reason that Chromebooks are winning the home and school markets is that they just work. I have a Chromebook along with all my other computers, and the problems are so few as to be negligible. I have yet to find a Microsoft OS computer that ever lived up to that not so lofty goal. I don't use that particular computer for anything serious unless I boot into the Linux side, but for most people, its email and browsing.
And you aren't chearged 80 some dollars a year (to start) for access to the Chromebook. Now imagine Microsoft coming in to replace say, a thousand student and 50 teacher school. Unless they give the laptops and OS and Office 365 away, who would ever jump at that?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Like last week's "revelation" that the latest Win10 build includes some SUBSCRIPTIONTHING.EXE and folks like you coming out of the woodwork to say "I told you so", despite Microsoft very, very clearly explaining that the file had nothing to do with Pro/Home installs and was purely for Enterprise"
Yeah about that....then WTF was it doing in a HOME OS, care to answer me that? Last I checked Windows Insiders are NOT testing Enterprise Products, all the Insiders get is the Home/Pro version. And please do not forget it won't have been the first time MSFT has lied to our faces, remember "The Kinect is an integral part of the Xbox One, we can't just flip a switch" until they did exactly that?
I'm sorry but this past year with all the underhanded shit we have seen with Win 10 has proven to just about everybody that they simply cannot be trusted anymore, hell they have made Windows Update into a risk because "no means no" is something nobody has taught to MSFT. The sad part is I NEVER thought I'd see the day where I would actually miss Steve Ballmer but Nutella and all his underhanded crap pushing Windows 10 makes me actually miss the big sweaty monkey.
BTW for those that want to lock in the "free upgrade" in case the hackers figure out a way to kill all the spying? Here is a tutorial on how to lock in the upgrade without actually installing win 10 which is a hell of a lot quicker than having to install then roll back to a decent version.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You forgot to mention ads in the metro(sexual) start menu.
I can't decide.... is the start menu's left side purposely annoying and cumbersome to use because they want to funnel our attention over to the pretty pictures (with ads) on the right.... or is the start menu's left side purposely annoying and cumbersome to use because they want to funnel our attention into Cortana...?
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016