Microsoft has been making hostile moves on licensing for on-prem/non subscription products for a while now. They want you to give up on local resources. Of course you could go to a competitor, but the only large competitor in the US is basically Google, and their offerings are not well tailored to business.
Microsoft used to offer cheaper licenses for Exchange for small companies. They have discontinued those cheaper offers for current software versions which means for many smaller companies, buying a Windows Server license and Exchange got prohibitively expensive and after end of life of those old versions the only feasible option forward was to switch to the cloud version of Exchange (and thus a subscription).
Serious question, I don’t get the “forced” part. Could you clarify this for me?
Microsoft has been making hostile moves on licensing for on-prem/non subscription products for a while now. They want you to give up on local resources. Of course you could go to a competitor, but the only large competitor in the US is basically Google, and their offerings are not well tailored to business.
I still don’t get it, how did Microsoft force them to switch? Offering something is not forcing?
Microsoft used to offer cheaper licenses for Exchange for small companies. They have discontinued those cheaper offers for current software versions which means for many smaller companies, buying a Windows Server license and Exchange got prohibitively expensive and after end of life of those old versions the only feasible option forward was to switch to the cloud version of Exchange (and thus a subscription).