Microsoft has announced that the Office on Demand feature will be removed from all Office 365 subscriptions in November 2014. This update will affect Enterprise, Small Business Premium, and Midsize business installations of Office 365 and ProPlus. But Microsoft will replace Office on Demand with three new capabilities - Microsoft Azure RemoteApp, Office Online, and shared computer activation. There's no longer any need to install all applications from Office Online to access shared documents - shared computer activation and other capabilities move Microsoft further into the cloud.

Shared Computer Activation

Office 365 ProPlus already worked fairly well in organizations that didn't need to share computers, like startups and smaller firms. But for the retail and manufacturing industries, among others, there was a big problem; shared computers. Office 365 ProPlus users are limited to installations on five computers and five tablets. Office on Demand addressed this issue. If a user logged into a computer as a guest but didn't have the latest version of Office, he could still use Office on Demand to:

• use Word and PowerPoint
• access his most frequently-used applications
• use other client applications like Access and Publisher

And all of this access was, and still is, available without using up one of the five permissible subscription licenses. But now shared computer activation support extends Office 365 ProPlus to the RDS/TS environment. Better yet, the Office installation on a shared computer is permanent now, and can easily be updated across all users. The activation logic is the same as Office on Demand.

Office Online and Microsoft Azure RemoteApp

This features allows Office 365 users to use popular Office applications like OneNote, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word using a web browser. So a person giving a presentation on a computer she has never used before could simply open a browser and load her PowerPoint presentation. Office Online can be accessed on a mobile device or tablet as well. This is a big upgrade from Office on Demand, which required installation time before Office could be used.

Microsoft Azure RemoteApp adds to the existing functionality built into the Remote Desktop Services of a Windows Server. While shared computer activation virtualizes the whole desktop of a device, Azure RemoteApp virtualizes only the application being used. So although it appears to be installed on the device, it's actually running remotely.