In the brave era of cloud computing, software is sold on a subscription basis and delivered on-demand over the Web.

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While the subscription economy is growing on the back of cloud computing, so too the sharing economy and the renting economy are growing but on the back of changing attitudes to ownership and the social element of transactions.

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That could hurt Microsoft as many companies refashion themselves for the era of "cloud" computing, a Google-backed approach in which software is easily accessed online and sold as a subscription product, rather than installed on companies' computers.

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