<p>With its most profitable franchise caught in the crossfire of aggressively priced cloud-basedofferings from competitors and the inertia of a user base reluctant to change, Microsoft last monthlaunched versions of its Office applications suite available by subscription only.</p><p>While offering a desktop suite as a service in this day and age hardly seems to be a bolddecision, it is exactly that for Microsoft. If the company can't convince a good chunk of its userbase to upgrade to the subscription-based versions of Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus over the nextyear, that could further slow the acceptance of Windows 8 on desktops and mobile platforms, mostnotably its Surface Pro tablet.</p><p>Most of the bullets in this crossfire will likely come from larger customers unwilling to changethe way they have purchased, deployed and supported Office -- a product with tentacles reachinginto every corner of their business -- for decades. And the associated cost of swapping outthousands of copies makes most businesses skeptical.</p><p>"It's an interesting model, but it's such a change of mind-set for people. It will take quite awhile to run down the cost benefits of this, if there turn out to be any," said Mike Drips, aninformation architect at CSC in Houston.</p><p><a href="http://searchenterprisedesktop.techtarget.com/news/2240180969/Is-a-subscription-for-Microsoft-Office-365-ProPlus-too-much-change">Keep reading...</a></p>