Microsoft "Albany" Offers Office and Security as Subscription 281
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."
Re:Something of a catch... (Score:5, Insightful)
It Would be Microsoft Doing This (Score:5, Insightful)
Fantastic (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupidass Microsoft... (And stupidass people paying for that crap...)
Not Unreasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
You currently pay $300 for the standard Microsoft Office 2007.
If all they're doing is spreading out the payment over 3-4 years, with a small premium thrown in, that's not such a bad deal. I'd happily pay a $25-50 premium on software like Office in order to receive constant updates. So if what they want is $115 annually instead of 300 at once, that's fine by me. These products don't usually have more than a 3-4 year life-cycle anyway, and this way instead of being stuck with a single version, you get something which improves over time.
Obviously, the question of how they implement it, what they charge, and how good the "free upgrades" really are will determine uptake of this product. But if you take off your microsoft-bashing hat for a second, this isn't as stupid as it looks.
Re:It Would be Microsoft Doing This (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not Unreasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
No I don't. Maybe if it has something that I need I would, but it doesn't so I don't.
Tired of Subscriptions (Score:5, Insightful)
Cable, phone, utilities all seems standard to us at this point, but now we have music subscriptions (stop paying, lose your music), radio subscriptions (love that satellite radio), game subscriptions (WoW addicts unite), and now more and more software subscriptions (I'm sorry, licensing).
I can perhaps forgive it for something like antivirus software where you are constantly downloading updates (glad my Mac doesn't need that yet), but Office? When do they slip Windows into that model? Would you like to boot today? Your subscription has expired, please enter a valid credit card.
Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, No It's Not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has really screwed up and doesn't seem to know where to go or what to do now that Vista crashed and burned. It will be hard for them to overcome the bad rap they earned on that one.
And Linux being free means that anyone that wants to try it out just needs to download it or copy CDs from someone else. They can try it whenever they want and if they like it, they keep right on using it.
Microsoft's days are numbered. Probably with big numbers right now, but numbered nonetheless.
Re:Not Unreasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have your file spread across 3 versions of office with minor to serious incompatabilities, how do you use your old files?
Re:Something of a catch... (Score:4, Insightful)
Software Maintenance (Score:3, Insightful)
so in other words (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It Would be Microsoft Doing This (Score:3, Insightful)
People currently don't perceive the cost of MS software as it is included in the cost of the computer.
If this becomes the primary distribution model, cheaper (and free) alternatives will be perceived all the more interesting.
Isn't the one-time purchase cost what made MS popular in the first place (against mainframe subscription model) ?
Re:Something of a catch... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not Unreasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
That's cuz MS *HAD* to release updates to get more $
With this, they get $ regardless of what they add in.
At the start, they will add really useful stuff that you can only get in "Albany".
Once enough idiots bite, they'll stop improving things, fire half their programmers and hire lawyers.
Why?
-To sue people trying to cancel their Albany subscription.
-To sue OpenOffice for implementing their patented, ISO standard file format.
Re:Something of a catch... (Score:4, Insightful)
renting software always fails. It has no purpose and MSFT is going to charge some obscene amount so that a year of renting you can buy a full version.
Personally for me it doesn't matter. My documents are in ODF, and I can use any numerous applications to open the data, from Open Office, to abi word, to google docs. I can get 100% portable versions of those to stick on a thumb drive, and OS agnostic.
It doesn't matter where I am I can get MY data. Can you do the same with MSFT rentals?
God, what have we done to deserve this? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to be incredebly stupid, and still a total masochist, to even think about RENTING it.
Jeesus, please save us from all this ignorance.
Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct, that is how they get around it.
Um, no. Technically, Microsoft could try this gambit; I'm not sure whether, legally, it would work or not. But practically, it'd be a death sentence on Office. Rights to Eleroth the Night Elf is one thing. Rights to your personal correspondence, to the data that your business needs to run, to your personal data, that's another. If Microsoft announced that they owned all the data created by subscription Office, nobody would buy it. Ever.
Re:Not Unreasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
With this model, if you stop paying, you lose all the benefit of 4 years' payments.
Re:by cutting prices! (Score:4, Insightful)
Pricing it higher will create the impression that this is a more worthwhile package (and vice versa: a lower-priced package will be less worthwhile). And it creates income that can be used to further build up the open source industry.
Re:Not Unreasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually understand why people stick with Windows more than I do Office. To most people Windows appears to come "free" with their computer. Office is always extra. OpenOffice is free, powerful and just as easy to use. Why pay for something when you can get the same feel and functionality for free?
"always up-to-date aspect of the service" (Score:3, Insightful)
>always up-to-date aspect of the service," Microsoft group product
> manager Bryson Gordon said.
Indeed we do. We're called Ubuntu users. The little orange icon lets us know when ANY of our programs have updates available and then DOESN'T pester the crap out of us if we don't install them right away.
And our subscriptions are always paid up.
Re:It Would be Microsoft Doing This (Score:3, Insightful)
They might--if they perceive it as renting their own data. I predict a lot of business are going to perceive this as paying Microsoft a price in order to access their documents--and Microsoft can change that price any time they feel like it. They aren't going to like that perception. "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."
Re:Not Unreasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem Microsoft has with Office is that they really want a subscription model, but they don't have subscription value to add. Think about Napster, for example. If you pay for a subscription to Napster ($13/month), you get unlimited access to all of the songs available, which is a significant savings over buying all of the music you may listen to only every once in a while. So the subscription model has value. With Office, Microsoft isn't adding any value. They're just trying to get more cash out of you.
Re:Also illegal, at least in Canada (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Happened? (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft's current business model is perfect (for them) wrt large corporations: licenses that were bought don't show up on the list of things to axe when business is slow, as it's already been paid for. They just postpone the upgrade, and concentrate on recurring costs (employees, travel, newspapers and so on). Eventually Senior VP #172 gets tired of underlings asking for something their version of Word can read, it's the good end of the cycle, there's money to burn: they buy the new version.
With subscription, software will be right up there at the top of the list of things that can be trimmed. "You mean we can save 1 megabuck *next year* by going OpenOffice? Done."
Why do you thing it's only Office Home and Student?
Re:It Would be Microsoft Doing This (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe. It's certainly true that business operate on a much different and much more complex accounting and budgeting framework than households, and maybe monthly/yearly payments for software better fit into the whole budgeting/life-cycle/depreciation system. But I rather suspect not.
Businesses are much more concerned with reliability than with novelty. Businesses are also very concerned about having control over where, when, and on what their money is spent. A CIO may buy something like MS Office figuring on a three-year lifecycle, but then realize that there's nothing to be gained by upgrading. Thus running the software longer than the three-year term originally planned represents a savings, and money in the budget for other things.
If this were not the case, most businesses would be running MS Vista and MS Office 2007. In fact very few are, and a significant number of businesses still have a significant number of MS Windows 2000 machines running.
The fact is that a word processor/spreadsheet package is much more like a typewriter than like a telephone line. It's a product that you buy and create documents with, not a service that needs the constant attention and maintenance like a phone network with a huge company behind it. And no business would welcome the possibility of being held hostage by one of their vendors. It's becoming increasingly clear that while applications may be proprietary, there is no reason for data formats to be. It's worth paying for a product for the features it delivers, but not worth the liability if what you create is worthless outside of the application.
I tend to think instead that this move by MS is fairly insignificant play in what is becoming a very significant battle that will determine the future of the company. They're being forced to shift the whole direction of the firm into an area where they have never had any success, and in which there are already very formidable players.
This isn't about software subscriptions, it's about hosted services. MS has seen the future and doesn't like what it sees -- systems, applications, databases, communications, etc all living on the network and available anywhere there is a connection (and in many cases where there is not), regardless of platform.
I work in a middling consultancy that is almost exclusively an MS shop, and I've already seen folks at my firm excited about the Salesforce/Google Apps pairing. We recently migrated our CRM system to Salesforce and the consultants we have on the road are very interested in the ability to review and edit contracts and proposals on the fly, from their Blackberries. They also really like the idea of how chat/mail/calendars can be integrated into particular account records without the clumsiness endemic to Outlook.
We've only just begun looking into an official use of the Google Apps, but there is much interest. I certainly think we'll be moving in this direction well before we start planning a Vista rollout, or even an Office 2007 rollout. And I don't believe that we are in a unique position.
MS is terrified of this because their entire existence depends upon the platform -- primarily Windows but also MS Office and the supporting systems that businesses require, like Exchange and MS SQL. Salesforce plus Google Apps chips away at the need for an MS platform, and certainly is a direct attack on the whole one-user/one-system model that MS has always used. I can get to my Saleforce account, company mail, company calendar, company documents, etc. from anywhere, on anyone's system.
Basically, if