Software Subscriptions: A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come
A nice piece by the “NYT”‘s David Pogue outlining Microsoft’s outrageous licensing plans. Quote:

“But this much I’m sure of: for companies that don’t automatically buy every new version of Windows and Office that comes down the pike, the new program is a bad deal. The Gartner Group research firm estimates that the new program will raise prices for these companies between 33 and 107 percent.

Companies that sign up for Software Assurance are, in essence, committing in advance to buying every upgrade — without knowing whether it will be any good, or even whether or not Microsoft will, in fact, release any upgrades at all during the three-year contract.

“In the old days, a company could buy one version of Office,” a Microsoft spokesperson told me. “They could run it for 50 years, and then tell us, [OE]I want the newest version, and I want the upgrade price.[base ‘] For Microsoft, this income stream was uneven and unpredictable.”

On that we can agree: the beneficiary of the new program is Microsoft, not the customer. ” Amen!