Microsoft "Albany" Offers Office and Security as Subscription

News.com is reporting that Microsoft has confirmed a subscription service is in the works for the next consumer version of their Office Suite. "Code-named Albany, the product has a single installer that puts Office Home and Student, OneCare, as well as a host of Windows Live services, onto a user's PC. As long as users keep paying for the subscription, they are entitled to the latest versions of the products. Once they stop paying, they lose the right to use any version."

Also illegal, at least in Canada

[trolltalk.com]

Up here, it's illegal to make it impossible for a person to access their own data. Therefore, while they are allowed to prevent you from making new documents, spreadsheets, etc., they cannot disable the "read-only" features of the software.

I Subscribe to OpenOffice

[NeverVotedBush]

Funny thing, too - it's totally free, I can download and use a copy locally, and I can use it on as many computers as I want to.

My security is also free, is updated regularly, and is pretty secure the way I have it configured. BTW, it's Linux.

Microsoft? Naahhhh...

Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada

[ergo98]

Up here, it's illegal to make it impossible for a person to access their own data.

I highly doubt this has any applicability to a subscription version of Office. When the subscription runs out, it doesn't suddenly encrypt all of your files. You are still free to bring those files to any of millions of capable machines, any print shop in the world, or use the long existing free "Viewer" versions.

More agile perhaps?

[Com2Kid]

One of the underlying goals of Agile software is to get away from the "big number release" type of mentality that leads to unhealthy software development practices (why worry about memory consumption when the product isn't go to ship for another 2 years? ...) and instead move developers into a mindset that their software should almost constantly be of ship quality.

Agile development also allows the quality of the software to be under constant incremental improvement. But this has a downside as well: it becomes very hard to pick a point in time to stop releasing patches and instead tell customers "now you have to buy a new version", especially since the next version that the company releases is "just" another incremental improvement over the previous release.

So basically agile development practices can spell death for the "Shiny New Version" business model, and thus an alternative revenue stream needs to be found.

Agile software allows developers to consistently and continuously release incrementally improved versions of an application. It therefore makes sense for companies to continuously pay incremental amounts for use of that software.

Selling the concept of "it will get better over time" to who ever is making business purchasing decisions may not be easy, but in the end, if some sales person can pull it off, it will be to everyone's benefit.

Customers will be able to have a more direct and immediate interaction with software companies, and software companies will be able to practice the software development methodologies that they KNOW they should be practicing.

Note in my defense:
Some people may take offense that agile software means no more big new versions, but I'd argue that it feels intuitively 'wrong' to fix a software bug that is annoying many users, but is too low priority to make the cut for a service pack, and then sit around knowing that users will not get to see this trivial fix for years, just because of the common business model that is used to sell big box software.

Disclaimer: I'm a Microsoft employee (been on /. a lot longer than @ MS!), everything I say is my own opinion and does not reflect the opinions of Microsoft.

(Besides, I've been here under a year and I work in mobile compilers!)

Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

There are viewers already

Word:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en [microsoft.com]

Excel:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c8378bf4-996c-4569-b547-75edbd03aaf0&displaylang=EN [microsoft.com]

Search for the rest "[MS app name] viewer".

QFT

[Weaselmancer]

you can renew your subscription or even use any of a number of free solutions (OpenOffice)

This bears repeating.

Re:If it's like Albany

[peragrin]

oh,oh, you forgot always over budget, never delivered on time, and makes you wonder where your money actually goes.

Re:What Happened?

[Mongoose Disciple]

According to TFA, this is an option they're offering and doesn't replace selling Office as they currently do.

From that perspective, I don't see this as out of touch with their customers. I'm sure a majority of the people who buy Office won't want this Albany thing, but I'll bet some do and those customers will be served better.

Large corporations I can especially see going for this. You budget for it and forget about it. It's how they tend to roll.

Re:Something of a catch...

[gunnk]

"if you're playing games" -- point conceded

Otherwise, I honestly find that Ubuntu is a much better value. Besides being free it comes with a huge range of applications (free) that I use. In fact, I find it has a lot more features than Windows.

I'm not completely anti-Microsoft and do think Windows is the right decision for some people -- and gamers go without saying. However, my experience is much the opposite of yours. My Ubuntu desktop is much more capable and pleasant than Vista or XP.

Re:What Happened?

[BigBlueOx]

According to TFA this is for "Office Home" and "Office Student". Doesn't sound like it's aimed at businesses to me.
I agree that a subscription model for businesses would make some sort of sense but this is aimed at "consumers".
The lights are on but nobody's home.

Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada

[trolltalk.com]

In your example, you saved your document in Albanian. There's nothing preventing you from reloading that document in Albanian.

Also, it turns out it's also illegal in the US - L'Oreal Corp. sued one of their IT suppliers who turned off all access to their data after they switched contractors. The courts ruled that the data belonged to L'Oreal, not the contractor, and that the contractor had to make the data available in machine-readable form, even if L'Oreal could no longer create additional data records with the product.

Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada

[immcintosh]

Most major corporate/government users would simply not abide anything other than complete and total ownership of their documents. Imagine a law firm with privileged attorney-client communications, or something like JPL with research data. Any version of Office that even thought to claim any sort of ownership rights over documents produced would indeed be a more or less immediate and outright death sentence for the product. It would instantly be consigned to the fringe uses where privacy doesn't really matter, meaning basically nothing in the corporate or government world.