Microsoft now says that more than 1 million people have signed up for the firm's new Office 365 Home Premium service. The firm feels this is an indication that consumers are willing to forego physical software and embrace cloud-based services.

On Wednesday Microsoft announced that the new Office "is officially the best-selling Office edition yet, with more than one sold every second on average since it launched."

To reach that conclusion Microsoft is counting all sales of Office, not just Office 365.

Office 365 the Fastest-Selling Office, Ever

However, the firm did note that it has now sold more than 1 million Office 365 Home Premium subscriptions. Microsoft also pointed out that it had reached the 1 million user plateau before popular applications Hulu Plus and Spotify.

With only 100 days passing since Office 365 Home Premium became available, Microsoft says that makes this the fastest-selling version of Office, ever. (Source: thenextweb.com)

If you're not familiar with the service, it's designed to offer an alternative to the traditional Office physical software package.

Rather than going to Best Buy and picking up a bundle that includes OneNote, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, Office 365 Home Premium users pay $100 per year for five licenses.

With that they get all of the aforementioned programs in addition to Access and Publisher, plus 20 GB storage through Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud computing service. Subscribers also get an hour of free calls through Microsoft's Skype video chat service.

The benefit of Office 365 is that consumers can expect constant updates and security fixes for their favorite Office programs. For Microsoft, the service represents a constant flow of revenue.

Business Users Also Shifting Towards Cloud-based Office

Microsoft has also noted that Office 365 is proving popular with the business crowd. The firm says that roughly one-quarter of its enterprise customers now use Office 365 rather than traditional Office software packages. (Source: pcworld.com)

Back in March 2013 Microsoft claimed that more than 1 million public and private sector employees had made the shift to business versions of Office 365.