A job listing posted by Microsoft is being hailed as sign of subscription-based times to come to the company's Office 365 and Windows products. Honestly, I believe this to be a matter of time - Subscription services have been increasing at an alarming rate, Microsoft has already tasted the advantages of such a model on their bottom line with their Xbox Live and Games Pass systems, and of course, there're always the ever-giant Spotifys and Netflixes of this world.

Windows and Office as a service is nothing out of the ordinary, really. The job listing for a "Product Manager, M365 Consumer Subscription - Modern Life & Devices (MLD)", which has a job description along the lines of "market a great new Microsoft 365 Consumer Subscription" doesn't come as a surprise. Going from this Office 365 consumer subscription to a Windows one is a bit of a stretch on the basis of the job posting alone, but it is in the foreseeable future for Microsoft's strategy to safeguard Windows and its updates behind a monthly payment, ensuring that one-off purchases are no longer a thing - and guaranteeing a predictable revenue stream.Of course, enterprises usually prefer to own things instead of having them in a rent model, but Office 365 for businesses has already paved the way for tighter integration of subscription services in the professional world. For users, though... Microsoft would just love to put their hands in a steady revenue stream from the OEM market - licenses for Microsoft's OS could ship with one or two years in-box, with subsequent version updates (outside the usual security updates, we'd guess and hope) would be locked behind a monthly payment. There's no way this model would leave users better off than before - Microsoft wouldn't change a model to one that would bring them less revenue, and the OEM market is a huge source of untapped, renewable revenue. We'll see how this shakes up.