Microsoft is pushing Office 2016 users towards Office 365

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In a bid to further persuade users of the standalone versions of Office to shift over to a cloud subscription (Office 365), Microsoft has announced that those who made a one-off purchase of an Office product will no longer get access to the business flavours of OneDrive and Skype come the end of the decade.

So here, we are talking about folks who have bought a standalone copy of Office 2016 or previous versions of the suite. Currently, these users can access and make use of both OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business.

However, on October 13, 2020 – which is the date for the end of mainstream support for Office 2016 – these users will have their access to both OneDrive and Skype business services cut off.

In other words, Microsoft wants you to switch over from a standalone product to an Office 365 subscription in order to keep these benefits.

Plentiful notice

In a blog post, Microsoft said: “We’re providing more than three years’ notice to give IT time to plan and budget for this change. Until this new requirement goes into effect in 2020, Office 2010, Office 2013 and Office 2016 perpetual clients will still be able to connect to Office 365 services.”

The firm also explained that those connecting to Office 365 services with a legacy version of Office were not enjoying the full range of benefits on offer.

But now, they won’t be enjoying any benefits come 2020, of course.

Microsoft is constantly refining Office 365 and pushing both consumers and business users towards the subscription offering for obvious reasons, and with some considerable success.

Indeed, last autumn, Microsoft announced some impressive Office 365 user numbers – the online suite had 85 million active commercial users, and 24 million consumers. And those ranks have doubtless swelled since then.

Via: PC World

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