Technology changes at a frightening pace; the future is now. Tomorrow arrives unexpectedly and frequently with little regard to the conventions and ideals that made yesterday possible.  Mobile devices, the cloud, Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD), X-as-a-Service and other Gatneresque buzzwords have reduced traditional PCs and notebooks to a commodity. For Microsoft, this is devastating.  Their entire business model was built on traditional PCs and the servers that drive them. Their licensing model, marketing, management and entire corporate culture are designed and refined to support a declining market segment that likely will never see growth again. Microsoft believes that its software has intrinsic value; a license should be paid for every device that accesses software containing Microsoft’s intellectual property.   Google believes that software is a means to an end, not an end unto itself; it is the data that is valuable, not the software that manipulates it.  Google charges on a per-user basis to access the tools required to manipulate that data.  It gives the operating systems away for free. Per device versus per user; the debate over which was more efficient has raged for ages. Microsoft has offered lip service to the concept for decades; however, its licensing models have always leaned towards per-device.  Software has device limits for install, Microsoft’s remote-access implementations make you count the number of devices you remotely access your desktops from, and so forth. Microsoft have even recently increased the cost of their per-user licencing by 15% because individuals using that model were (in Microsoft’s view of the universe) getting too much value for their dollar.  Back when there wasn’t even a computer for every employee – and families often had a single PC for all members – this view of the world made a sort of sense.  End users didn’t...