365
Microsoft doubles down on moving Office 365 services to the cloud by discontinuing business services for standalone Office software.
Microsoft is giving Office users a generous heads up in their latest Office 365 ProPlus update released April 20, 2017, regarding the future of certain business-centric services that have been made available by Office 365. With this new update, “Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support will be required to connect to Office 365 services” beginning October 13, 2020.
What does this mean for Office 2010, Office 2013, and Office 2016 users? When this policy change goes through in 2020, they will no longer have access to certain Office 365 enterprise-level services, notably Skype for Business and OneDrive for Business. The consumer versions of Skype, OneDrive, and other consumer-level programs will not be affected by this update.
Users of perpetual Office software will still have access to the traditional Office apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. (depending on your version of Office), but Office 365 specific services like Skype for Business and OneDrive for Business will be reserved for Office 365 users only. The rationalization for the update comes as a security and compatibility issue in that any older versions of Office will not be able to utilize the full scope of features and security updates because of perpetual software’s inability to receive major updates or new features.
If you are an enterprise user that wants to maintain your access to the business-level Skype and OneDrive without having to transfer all of your important files over, switching over to the cloud-compatible Office 365 is your best bet. My Choice Software offers all the versions of Office 365 (listed as Office Pay-As-You-Go) to suite home, student, business, and enterprise users. Cloud-compatibility and constant updates seem to be the future of software as we know it, so why not be ahead of the curve?
Visit our Microsoft - Pay As You Go page to find which version of Office 365 fits your situation best, available in most versions for both PC and Mac. Contact us with any questions regarding this cloud-based system or for general information for Office 365 on My Choice Software products and services.
