Microsoft announces support policy change to Office Pro Plus and the versions that can connect to Office365 Services.
You can read up on this announcement here:
Office 365 ProPlus To Get Major Policy Changes in September
Wow is all I can say. Microsoft is really deciding to alienate any customer who decides that they do not want to follow their Office365 train.
The gist of this announcement is that if you are running on premise perpetual licenses of Office Pro Plus and using them to access Office 365 services (such as Exchange Online), Microsoft is going to be blocking you in the future.
The only on premise editions of Office that they will allow to access these services must be within Main Stream support (first 5 years after the launch of the product). The policy is set to take place in 3 years, but ironically it is set to take place the day Office 2016 goes out of Main Stream support.
The message from Microsoft – stay current or be left behind. The unfortunate thing is that many Enterprises just can’t stay current. They have dependencies on 3rd party applications that often mean they cannot just upgrade. This is not to even say if they have a valid Business reason for doing this (often the only one for Office upgrades are support ending).
When are Enterprises going to stand up to Microsoft and tell them they aren’t going to take this anymore? Come on Google, time for you to make that viable Office killer… Microsoft is making all the right moves for you to steal this market from them.
