The conversation seems to have turned into a lovefest for XP, but that wasn't really the point of the article, so I'll try to bring it back on track.

The topic of the article is: When companies finally do move on from XP, will they prematurely jump on the SaaS and Office 365 bandwagon without thinking it all the way through? Of course, the answer is not a definite Yes or No. (When is any situation truly binary?) The answer is: some will, some won't, and some will get rained out.

The real benefits of SaaS and O365 boil down to measureable lower short-term license costs and theoretically lower long term support costs verses overall lower license costs. For companies that try to keep up with the latest and greatest, SaaS/O365 might be a good choice. But, since we're talking about companies still on XP, that's not really the group we're talking about. These are folks that stick with what works, whether by choice or due to forces caused by internal or external requirements.

Its going to come down to the preferences of each decision maker. Some will go for the short-term benefits; others will prefer the lower overall license costs, although the gotcha of licenses being tied to the hardware will certainly take some of the shine off of that. MS is definitely trying to push everyone to the cloud because of the boost to their overall bottom line. Unfortunately for them, it will push a few to consider alternatives such as Linux and one of the OSS office suites and many will take that plunge, but I doubt it will be enough to bother MS.