That’s the marketing reason which I know is your area of expertise.

The bigger driver tho is Wall St behind them who penalise capex heavy businesses and incentivise ARR. That’s why every company has a subscription, even if it doesn’t make sense (ie it’s not attention based). They want the predictability of recurring payments to smooth out business cycles where capex drops in down periods.

Money drives all this stuff. It’s why the DEI crap got a foothold in the corporate world, the financiers made requirements of this crap as part of governance, HR being filled with ideologues with nothing better to do are the perfect commissars for it so it ends up sticking.

Bad incentives creating bad behaviour driving worse incentives driving worse behaviour - that’s the story of the fiat world.