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Microsoft Office will be getting perpetual licenses again

There are many things that Microsoft is doing right in the tech world today. Xbox Game Pass is wonderful, Windows 10 just keeps getting better and the firm also has conservation in mind.

But something we have never really been able to get behind is paying a monthly subscription for Microsoft Office in the form of Microsoft 365.

With a subscription for Microsoft 365 starting at R109 per month for a single user, that means most people, especially in developing markets, can’t afford to continuously pay for a license to access their documents.

This is set to change however with Microsoft stating that it will be introducing “a new perpetual release for both Windows and Mac, in the second half of 2021”.

The announcement wasn’t big at all with that single line hidden away in a blog about improvements coming to Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server and Project Server in 2021.

Unfortunately there isn’t much detail about this perpetual release aside from pointing to an “ask Microsoft anything” happening in October within the Office Community.

While this is great news, one has to wonder whether it’s necessary.

Data collated by Datanyze reveals that G-Suite has a dominant position in the market with 59.62 percent market share. While Office 365 (now Microsoft 365) is next in line with 40.25 percent, Microsoft Office 2013 has a tiny 0.01 percent of the market share.

The big draw here – from our perspective – is that G-Suite is free to anybody with a Google account. While it is very limited in its functionality, for most home users and students, it is enough to get them by.

It will be interesting to see not only how a perpetual license for Microsoft 365 would be priced, but who it would be marketed to.

All of that aside, clearly there is an appetite for a perpetual license for Microsoft’s Office suite so now we wait for 2021 to see how Microsoft presents it.

[Via – Windows Central]

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