abstract:The Subscription Computing model was developed by IBM research. Providers that supply not only network access and a foundation suite of applications but also the complete user environment—including all customer premises equipment—as a package for a monthly subscription.
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.
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.