Ok. I believe this should be a simple question to answer (even if the answer is not one I would like to hear).

• If i start to venture down the route to recommend my org to purchase an E3 plan inc Office 2010 Pro Plus. What happens when Office 2013 comes to market?
• I'm assuming there should be a seamless migration (once we've all decided it's stable enough)?
• As I would be paying a monthly fee I'm assuming that too would not necessarily rise?
• Can there be a mix and match of office 2010 and office 2013 clients? I assume that licence assignment can deal with that but this is more of a technical question about co-existence.

So, shall I hold my breath awaiting the answers?

1. With E3 you get Office 2013 included in your subscription when it is released.   You have a "perpetual" license to the latest version of Office Pro with the E3 plan.

2. You will upgrade the PC, but as you may have seen on the Office 2013 preview, it’s a pretty seamless install.

3. Prices are locked in for 1 year on the Office 365 Portal or 3 years for Enterprise Agreements (250+ users)

4. You should be licensed, but Microsoft may not keep a downloadable version of Office 2010 available…so make sure you download and save one copy somewhere of the older version.

Hope this helps...cheers!

Thanks for a most helpful answer. It's what I was hoping for. I've yet to see how I can download office 2013 (even a preview, which would be useful). But a perpetual licence is a good start to tell the boss that they need to make the expenditure.

thanks again.

Hi Rich,

I have not read any information on migrating a 2010 to 2013 so I am not sure how that works, it it is a straight forward migration, then my guess is that it will be done one server cluster at a time, or they may allow you you to pick and do customer by customer with a cut - off date. Once it is available 2013 local Office will be available to E3 clients, that is in the fine print. For that you can most likely do on a time frame to suit your needs.

Fees, well who knows Microsoft can change and come up with all new plans to go with the new software, as there are many changes taking place.

Office 2010 and office 2013 can live togther even on a single PC, so yes I expect you will be able to keep 2010 as you may have stuff written for those clients that needs to be ported.