14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft announced Office 2021 earlier today, and the company used this opportunity to also introduce a new update policy not only for the productivity suite but also for its Windows 10 operating system.
Office LTSC and Windows 10 LTSC will receive support for just 5 years moving forward (the Long Term Servicing Channel for the operating system was previously eligible for 10 years of updates), and the change will come into effect beginning later this year when new versions are projected to launch.
“With this release, we will bring Office and Windows into alignment in support of the same limited scenarios. Both Office LTSC and Windows 10 LTSC will remain governed by the Fixed Lifecycle Policy. Both products will be supported for five years, and both the next perpetual version of Office LTSC and Windows 10 LTSC will be released in the second half of this calendar year,” Microsoft says.
Office LTSC and Microsoft 365 under the same roof
Microsoft explains that while some customers do need the n-premises version of Office on their devices, they can very well install Microsoft 365 when possible.
“We have built Office LTSC for a limited set of specific situations: regulated devices that cannot accept feature updates for years at a time, process control devices on the manufacturing floor that are not connected to the internet, and specialty systems that must stay locked in time and require a long-term servicing channel. We expect that most customers who use Office LTSC won’t do it across their entire organization, but only in specific scenarios. The good news is that you can deploy both Office LTSC and the Microsoft 365 version of Office with the same deployment tools,” it says.
As for Windows 10, the next LTSC release will happen in the fall, possibly after the debut of the 21H2 update Microsoft is already working on.