Microsoft announced an update to its productivity suite, Office 2021, for consumers, along with a variant specifically aimed at companies, the Office Long Term Maintenance Channel.
Just like the previous version, Office 2019, Office 2021 is Microsoft’s standalone option for those who don’t want to buy a company’s cloud-enabled Microsoft 365 subscription. Office 2021 is expected to launch later this year for both Mac and Windows, Microsoft 365 corporate vice president, Jared Spataro, said at a company blog post On thursday. Meanwhile, Office LTSC will be available as a commercial preview from April for Mac and Windows, with a full release scheduled for later this year.
Microsoft will provide support for both products for five years, a small reduction from the seven-year warranty offered with previous Office products. Each will come with OneNote and 32- and 64-bit versions. The one-time purchase price will remain the same for personal and small business users, although there is a 10% increase in price for Office Professional Plus, Office Standard and individual purchases of Office applications.
The company did not offer many details about what kind of new features and updates we will see in Office 2021, but has confirmed what users can expect from Office LTSC.
“The new features in Office LTSC will include accessibility improvements, features like Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel, support for dark mode in various applications and performance improvements in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint,” wrote Shapiro.
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While I am sure that Microsoft would prefer companies to simply move to the cloud, it is also clear that the company realizes that not everyone can or even wants to do so. In Thursday’s blog post, Microsoft charged your single purchase version of Office as a “special product for specific scenarios”. These scenarios include where users are on regulated devices that cannot receive monthly updates, process control devices in factories that cannot be connected to the Internet, or Specialty systems that must remain locked in time and require a long-term service channel, he said.
In an interview with The Verge, Spataro framed the company’s decision as “a matter of trying to find customers where they are. ”
“We certainly have a lot of customers who have moved to the cloud in the past 10 months, it really happened en masse,” he told the outlet. “At the same time, we definitely have customers who have specific scenarios where they don’t feel they can move to the cloud.”
Microsoft had previously stated that even with your advertising momentum to convince users migrate to the cloud, plans to continue rolling standalone and perpetual licenses for Office tools for the foreseeable future. ONEand based on today’s announcement, the companyWe are committed to that promise.