Microsoft plans to upgrade the “perpetual” Office for enterprises in the second half of the year, when it will also slash support to five years and raise prices by 10%.

The company’s multiple shots at the traditional form of licensing — dubbed “perpetual” because the license provides rights to run the software as long as one wants — are more evidence, if it’s needed, that Microsoft is eager to push, pull, and prod commercial customers into service-esque subscriptions.

Microsoft reiterated, seemingly for the nth time, that it is expending virtually all of its Office-related resources on the subscription-based Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and implied that anything but a subscription would be second rate and substandard.

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