On 13th October 2020, when Office 2010 reaches its end of life support, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support for any issues you encounter, bug fixes for any overall issues that are discovered, or security fixes for any vulnerabilities which become apparent. This means that your system will be open to the potential exploitation of security vulnerabilities. We recommend, and so do Microsoft, upgrading from Office 2010 as soon as possible to ensure your data is protected.
Office 2010, like almost all Microsoft products, has a support lifecycle during which we provide bug fixes and security fixes. This lifecycle lasts for a certain number of years from the date of the product’s initial release. For Office 2010, the support lifecycle is 10 years. The end of this lifecycle is known as the product’s end of support.
You can read more on the Microsoft website here.
There are a couple of ways you can go about upgrading, you can either purchase a one-off product (which will expire as Office 2010 will, leaving you to pay for an upgrade next time) or an ongoing subscription which involves paying monthly, but allows you to always be running the most up-to-date version of Office with ongoing technical and security support, without ever having to pay a lump sum.
One-off purchase
Office 2019 is available to purchase as a one-off. The downside to this, is that software moves on quickly. If you buy it as a one-off, the features you have access to will remain exactly the same as the day you bought it, until it expires in ten years. It is also one license per one PC.
Subscription
Purchasing Office on a subscription basis means that you will receive regular updates. Not only for security, but for features as well. This means you always have access to the most up-to-date software. Not only that, but the subscription model allows the installation of Office on to up to 5 devices per user.
The other big benefit to businesses of an Office subscription, is that everyone in that company should eventually be using the same version. When you buy the one off version it becomes out of date very quickly, and the next person to upgrade on a one-time-purchase basis will end up with a more recent version and so on. With each user having different features, it means that someone doing something on one machine, would have to go about it a different way on another – this can cause confusion, and waste quite a lot of time during the working day!
If you would like to discuss what the best option for you and your business might be, please do get in touch with us for a chat. We’ll be happy to help talk about what you need and how to get the best out of your Office package.
