Does Microsofts Plan To Sell Software As A Service Make Sense?
While Microsoft remains dominant in the office productivity suite space, it knows that it’s facing renewed competition from online offerings and open source offerings. While none of those other products really match the breadth and depth of Microsoft’s, in some cases they’re reaching “good enough” quality, and Microsoft recognizes the threat of a Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” situation, where the good enough product ends up beating out the much more expensive, but more complete product. So, as part of a strategy to deal with that, Microsoft is testing offering Office as a subscription service. It’s targeted at consumers, not businesses, who would pay a smaller monthly fee to get Microsoft Office and a variety of other components. If they stop paying, they lose the software (but keep their data and documents, of course). While I have no idea if this particular offering will catch on, it is a step in the right direction. Selling software as software is increasingly an unsus
