Microsoft has officially launched Office 2013 and Office 365 which are available for purchase in retail stores across 162 countries and on the Office website. It looks like Microsoft is choosing a subscription package option for their cloud based Office 365 offering. But it is not going to be easy to be easy to convince users to pay a monthly or annual fee for the latest version of Office and Microsoft is going to have to work hard at it.Microsoft Office is heavily integrated with Microsoft SkyDrive cloud service and influenced by the modern UI and Windows 8. A $99.99 per year subscription to Office 365 will provide access to five instances of Office 2013 on your PC or Mac and will give you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access. Microsoft is also bundling 20GB of additional SkyDrive cloud storage and 60 minutes of Skype calls per month. If you're not a fan of annual subscriptions then the monthly option is $9.99 or there are standalone bundles.
Another change in Microsoft’s structure with Office 2013 and Office 365 is its distribution. The boxed copies of Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365 won't include DVDs in US, UK and other developed markets. Instead they will product codes which will allow users to go online and download the software. Emerging markets will still offer DVD versions, but it looks like a majority of the users will have to download the software. This makes us wonder why Microsoft didn’t use their Windows Store as an option for users to purchase and download the Office Suite.
In any case it looks like Microsoft will clearly shift toward a full digital offering in the future and Office 2013 is the first transition toward that.
source – Microsoft