14 DAY TRIAL // Office 365 has become quite a cash cow for Microsoft, especially during these difficult times when more people are working from home and collaboration tools are a must-have to remain productive.
We’ve known for a while that Office versions with a perpetual license aren’t necessarily Microsoft’s favorite thing, and as compared to Office 365, they also come with a major setback for customers.
While Office 365, which is available with a subscription engine, always gets the latest improvements and new features as soon as they’re ready, the standard version of Office just sticks with the same feature lineup available on release. In other words, the features that are currently available in Office 2019 are more or less old, and the functionality bundled with Office 365 isn’t released for customers running this version.
But with Office 2019 already three years old, some were wondering if Microsoft is ready to move entirely to a subscription model for its productivity suite.
New perpetual release coming in 2021
As it turns out, it’s not, as Microsoft still wants to release at least one more Office version that would come with a perpetual license.
The company confirmed this product at Ignite earlier this week, but just as expected, no further details were shared simply because the project is still in the works.
“Today we are announcing that the next versions of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server and Project Server will be available in the second half of 2021, and are only available with the purchase of a subscription license. Subscription entitles access to support, product updates, security and time zone patches,” Microsoft said.
“Microsoft Office will also see a new perpetual release for both Windows and Mac, in the second half of 2021. We will share additional details around the official names, pricing and availability of all these products later.”
A preview version of the next version is expected in the coming months, albeit this is just pure speculation right now.