Microsoft Office Licensing
The Misunderstanding of Microsoft Office Licenses.
There is a misunderstanding around the buying of an Office License; many still believe that purchasing a new license once-off will have lifetime access to the programs included, however, this is only partially correct; There are offers for a once-off purchase i.e. Home & Student or Home & Business, however it is strongly advised against for various reasons. Microsoft is perusing a SAAS structure for their licenses, but what does that mean for the users?
Software As A Service (SAAS) is the next step for Microsoft and it is obvious that they are trying to discourage users from purchasing “the once-off” for reasons that become a win/win for both the users and Microsoft themselves. SAAS is basically subscription-based software like Office 365, which gives the option for both annual and monthly subscriptions. This gives leeway for Microsoft to update the programs, within said license, as regularly as possible – releasing the patches online intermittently as opposed to releasing whole packages every year that users must walk into physical shops to purchase a new version, instead users can patch their programs from the internet in their own home without excess fees to upgrade the version that they have already paid for.
If the up-to-date programs don’t convince one enough to accept the subscription basis that Microsoft has put into place for their licenses, there are still once-off packages for lifetime access to respective software – however, in the long run, this isn’t cost-effective as the lump sum of money paid at the original purchase is quite a hefty amount, as well as keeping in mind that these packages will not have access to the often released updates & bug fixes. One should also keep in mind that Microsoft releases the latest versions of their programs every two or so years, therefore after two years of purchasing your once-off lifetime access, your version will have already become outdated, so in the long run it works out better to purchase the annual subscription.
– iTFuture Team
Sources:
