A subscription business model is where you pay a periodic fee for software. I imagine most of you have at least one software application where you do that; eg antivirus software.
At least for personal/private/not enterprise customers, Microsoft has a licensing model, where you pay for Office or Windows and you get it... until 3 or more years later, when a new version comes out and, if you want to upgrade, you buy that new version.
Microsoft does have an "Enterprise" business model that includes the subscription approach. According to an article by Brad Chacos in the June 2013 edition of PC World, Microsoft is going to evolve to eliminating the license model for the subscription model. Coupled with this, Redmond will eliminate the big version change process for a continual update process. Office 365 and Windows 8 may be the last big version release.
I don't know if I like this. For "casual users," many are still on Office 2003. I bet the majority of residents in our community are still on Windows XP. Many don't have any desire to learn the new releases. Can you imagine having to pay an annual fee for those programs?
Brad Chacos is gushingly enthusiastic about this change: "Microsoft's incremental future truly is the future- not the past. And its about time it arrived." What do you think?
References:
Microsoft Licensing Models
Microsoft Office 2013 is not transferable to another computer... NOT
A New World of Licensing
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