Microsoft Will Sell Office, Windows as a Bundle (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft announced plans on Monday to start offering Windows 10 and Office together in a single subscription service. Microsoft 365, as the service is known, will also include security and management tools and come in two flavors: one for large enterprises and the other for small-to-medium businesses. The company didn't say how much it will charge for either version of the service.

Comments

Re:Not just no.

[RazorSharp]

Linux users: the vegans of the computing world.

Following this analogy, I would compare Windows users to fast food junkies who occasionally sit down for a fancy meal at Big Boy. I guess that would make MacOS users the patrons of gourmet.

These comparisons won't fly around here since they don't involve cars.

I feel wrong about this

[i_ate_god]

paying a monthly bill to Microsoft for Windows? Feels funky to me. Very funky...

That does it for one-off licensing...

[ErichTheRed]

I guess it's been coming for a while. From their perspective it makes total sense - keep everyone on a single version of Windows and Office, force all the consumer users to accept every OS and application update, etc. The average consumer is used to the subscription model now - many are on Office 365 and almost everyone pays for their mobile phone every month. I can't say I'm too happy about the idea of having to rent the operating system as well as the office software running on top of it, but hopefully they'll realize they can't trap everyone in that cycle.

This seems to be the ultimate desired state -- collect revenue on a permanent basis little by little, rather than rely on enterprise agreements and one-off software purchases. It's going to be a big shift though, Windows client licenses have been sold to OEMs for ages, and buying a new computer means it comes pre-licensed for the life of the machine. Windows Server licenses have been either one-off purchases or covered under much bigger enterprise agreements. If you shift to a monthly fee, who pays it, and what happens if you don't pay?

Being in the IT industry for a while gives an interesting perspective...this is officially the point where we start swinging back toward an IBM mainframe style model. IBM still rakes in massive amounts of money by selling companies a mainframe, keeping it fed with parts and software, and charging monthly for the use of computing power. They used to be pretty much the only game in town, and the PC/x86 ecosystem was the break from that. Microsoft's got this going on the Azure side, and now will have another revenue stream on the device side, so we're back to central control of everything. I guess it makes sense because consumers are used to locked-down phones. But, I wonder if as PCs become a niche product for doing actual work rather than consuming entertainment, how many businesses will be happy with having to buy the same software over and over for eternity?

Re:Not just no.

[Chas]

However I am not paying month-to-month for it...

The difference is simple, but profound.