Microsoft announces next versions of Office without subscription

Microsoft has announced an update to its productivity suite, Office 2021, for consumers as well as a variant specifically geared towards businesses, Office Long Term Servicing Channel.

Like its predecessor, Office 2019, Office 2021 is Microsoft’s standalone option for people who don’t want to purchase a subscription for Microsoft 365, which is cloud-ready, Office 2021 is expected to roll out later this year for both. Mac and WindowsSaid Jared Spataro, vice president of Microsoft 365 at a company blog post Thursday. Meanwhile, Office LTSC will be available as a commercial preview from April on Mac and Windows, with full release slated for later this year.

Microsoft will provide support for both products for five years, a slight downgrade from the seven-year warranty offered with previous Office products. Each will ship with OneNote and will ship with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The one-time purchase price will remain the same for personal and small business users, although there will be a 10% price increase for Office Professional Plus, Office Standard, and individual Office applications.

The company hasn’t provided many details on the kind of new features and updates we’ll see with Office 2021, but it has confirmed what users can expect with Office LTSC.

“New features in Office LTSC will include accessibility improvements, features such as Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel, dark mode support in several applications, and performance improvements in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint.” , Shapiro wrote.

While I’m sure Microsoft would prefer businesses to move to the cloud already, it’s also clear that the company realizes that not everyone can and won’t do it. In Thursday’s blog post, Microsoft, tender billed his one-time purchase version from the office as a “specialized product for specific scenarios”. These scenarios include when users are on regulated devices that cannot receive monthly updates, process control devices on fabrication shops that cannot be connected to the Internet, or specialThere are systems that need to get stuck over time and require a long-term maintenance channel, he said.

In an interview with the edge, Spataro framed the company’s decision as “a matter of trying to meet customers where they are. ”

“We definitely have a lot of customers who have migrated to the cloud in the last 10 months, it’s really happened en masse,” he told the point of sale. “At the same time, we certainly have customers who have specific scenarios where they don’t feel like they can move to the cloud.”

Microsoft has previously argued that even with his advertising push to convince users to move to the cloud, he plans to continue deployment autonomous and perpetual licenses for its Office tools for the foreseeable future. Ana based on today’s announcement, the companyeems is committed to this promise.