Microsoft has confirmed that it will be removing access to some features of its Office 2016 service, notably the business forms of Skype and OneDrive, as of the close of this decade – as it bids to get more of its users to adopt cloud services.
Back when its Office 365 cloud suite was launched, the software giant indicated that it wanted those that deploy its Office services to make the cloud switch. Now, as of 2020, a number of these customers will have to purchase an Office 365 plan to do this.
In the system requirements update it released earlier this month, Microsoft stated that customers who already have subscriptions to the likes of Office 2016, 2013 and 2010 will lose business Skype and OneDrive following the expiration of mainstream support.
Any customers who hold subscriptions to these Office products will continue to enjoy access until October 13, 2020, which is the date that Microsoft has pencilled in for scrapping its Office 2016 mainstream support and for launching support for the policy that will be replacing it.
While a number of enterprise users are unlikely to be affected in any major way by this news (perhaps because they favour deploying their personal Skype rather than the business version of it or OneDrive), there will be some small business users that have deployed one of these versions of Office to power their company and thus will have to make the transition. Those who have been using cloud OneDrive for Business for the storage of documents like Excel spreadsheets will be required to either subscribe to the personal version or buy Office 365.
The good news is that these changes will only impact a small number of services. Apps for Office 365 include the likes of Excel, PowerPoint and Word, while services for it include Skype, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. Of these, Skype and OneDrive are the only ones built into the standalone Office products. This can be rather confusing, because both have been built into the operating system Windows 10, but when Microsoft's policy change takes effect, customers will still have access to the OneDrive and Skype consumer versions with this Windows 10 connection. It is the corporate versions that they will lose access to, according to a representative of the company, who also stated that those customers who have subscriptions to the standalone versions of Office would still be able to use Outlook for linking to an on-premises server such as Exchange.
Explaining the changes, Microsoft said: "When customers connect to Office 365 with a legacy version of Office, they're not enjoying all that the service has to offer. The IT benefits – particularly security – are cut short. And the end user experience in the apps is limited to the features shipped at a point in time."
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