Microsoft will block some on-premise access to Office 365

Redmond blames move on gap between rolling cloud updates and ageing on-premise software

From 2020, users of standalone Microsoft Office products will not be able to use Office 365 services such as Skype for Business, OneDrive for Business and Outlook.

Microsoft will only allow Office client connectivity from subscription clients (Office 365 ProPlus) or Office perpetual clients within mainstream support to connect to Office 365 services from 13th October 2020, the firm said in a blog post published last week.

This move is going to affect standalone desktop versions of Office which range from Office 2010 to Office 2016. Mainstream support for Office 2016 also ends on the same day as the new policy comes into effect.

Essentially this means that organisations will need to either buy a version of Office this is still supported (right now, none will be by 2020), or purchase an Office 365 subscription.   Microsoft are pushing their customers from one-off purchases towards subscriptions to their cloud productivity suite.

Alistair Speirs is the senior operations product manager at Microsoft, Alistair is blaming the move on the growing gap between Redmond’s constantly-updated cloud software and the ageing on-premise software accessing it, saying that while the company updates system requirements for new on-premise apps and servers, it doesn’t always do that when it upgrades its cloud products.

“In absence of that, we are sharing these system requirement changes as early as possible and as part of a larger discussion of the Office 365 ProPlus roadmap for deployment and management capabilities,” he said.

Ron Markezich is the Corporate vice president for the office commercial marketing team, he added in another recent blog post that Microsoft were giving companies more than 3 years notice which enables IT departments enough time to plan and budget for this change.

“Until this new requirement goes into effect in 2020, Office 2010, Office 2013 and Office 2016 perpetual clients will still be able to connect to Office 365 services,” he said.

This move affects single users of Outlook, OneDrive or Skype, but it does not affect those single users who access web and mobile applications.

The schedule for Microsoft’s new updates for Office 365 is changing, the new features are being delivered in March and September, it’s going to be roughly at the same time when Windows 10 will have similar updates.