<p>Will Office 2013 be Microsoft's final major desktop office suite upgrade? Talkin' Cloud is betting yes. Check out Microsoft's new pricing for Office 2013 and Office 365. Read between the lines and it's clear Microsoft is using desktop software subscription services as a potential stepping stone toward full-blown cloud services. Over time, that means Office 365 will ultimately consume Office 2013, Talkin' Cloud believes.</p><p>Yes, customers can still pay a full-blown one-time fee for a single Office 2013 desktop suite license. But the price and license only covers one copy of Office 2013 running on PC or Mac. Check the pricing for Office 365s beginner suites which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more and you'll see aggressive, monthly subscription fees that allow users to jump between multiple PCs and Macs. All the pricing information is here, on The VAR Guy's web site.</p><p>Channel partners, cloud integrators and cloud services providers should take a long-term view of the market. Some customers will never abandon desktop office suites and traditional licensing models. But Microsoft is giving customers plenty of motivation to shift to subscription-based pricing. The predictable monthly fee coupled with regular, ongoing software upgrades seems to make a lot of sense. Plus, it also resembles SaaS pricing models that many cloud customers know and love.</p><p>Microsoft, no doubt, will always have some form of a desktop software suite. But over time it looks like Office 365 the cloud service will consume the Office 2013 desktop suite. And customers will simply pay a monthly bill for ongoing Office service, much in the way that they already pay for cable, cell phone and Internet service.</p><p><a href="http://www.talkincloud.com/microsoft-office-365-will-swallow-office-2013-prediction/">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoftpri0/2019187279_microsoft_offers_office_as_a_service.html">Microsoft Office as the Netflix of productivity suites</a> (The Seattle Times)</p><p><a href="http://www.techspot.com/news/50196-microsoft-office-2013-pricing-and-packages-announced.html">Microsoft Office 2013 pricing and packages announced</a> (TechSpot)</p><p><a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9231375/Microsoft_39_s_Office_365_Home_Premium_to_cost_99.99_annually_per_subscription">Microsoft&#039;s Office 365 Home Premium to cost $ 99.99 annually per subscription</a> (Computerworld)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&ned=us&ncl=dEUUttseWJ5ncfMD2IwCjdXq_OjTM">116 additional articles.</a></p>