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Microsoft Reinforces The Move Towards Subscription-Based Microsoft 365

Last week Microsoft reminded customers that Office 2010 and Office 2016 for Mac have received their final security updates.

With the suites being removed from the company’s support list there is no better time to make the move to the subscription-based Microsoft 365.

Jared Spataro, an executive in the Microsoft 365 group, expressed concern for those organizations that didn’t make the switch to Microsoft 365 in a company blog.

“We’ll no longer provide technical support, bug fixes, or security updates for these products,” said Sapatro, “and organizations that continue to use them may face increased security risks and compliance issues over time.”

Office 2010 and Office 2016 for Mac are sets of Windows productivity applications which Microsoft deemed “perpetual” versions of their application suite. They include most notably Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With these versions customers pay a one-time fee for the product, which is then licensed to operate on a specific PC or Mac for as long as the user wants, even after support has ended if they are willing to risk the lack of security patches. Office 2010, which debuted in April 2010, received the standard decade of support while Office 2016 for Mac, which was released in September 2015, was allotted the maximum for a Mac-based bundle: five years.

Even with Office 2016 and Office 2019 being released as successors, there has been nothing more than a mention by Microsoft about them. They are only viewed as last-resort replacements for the expiring suites. It has been made clear that application software-by-subscription is the inevitable end game for all customers. In fact, Microsoft 365 has become the company’s default.

Microsoft recognizes that everyone is in a different stage of their transition to the cloud and will stay committed to supporting their customers as they make the move. However, Spataro believes there is only a very narrow set of customers who would not be a good fit for the by-subscription Microsoft 365 noting, “For those customers who … have a specific need for on-premises or hybrid deployment, such as fully disconnected or restricted environments, we offer Office 2019, the perpetual version of Office that does not receive feature updates.”

Microsoft makes it loud and clear that Microsoft 365 is the far superior option going as far to state “Office 365 crushes Office 2019.”

Customers have already been alerted by Microsoft that on-premises server software such as Exchange Server and SharePoint Server will be transitioned to a subscription model for the 2021 successors. While there has been no mention yet of a requirement for customers to convert to subscriptions there has been rumblings that Microsoft may eventually end perpetual licensing for the client Office apps.

Has your company made the move? Contact us at 920-435-5353 or contactus@cccp.com if interested in learning more about Microsoft 365.