These customers have resisted the pressure to move to Office 2019 or Microsoft 365. The major target audience for Office 2021 is volume licence customers using Office 2016. Update in late 2021: turns out Microsoft wants people to think perpetual licence Office is outdated, so they went with Office 2021. After all, Office 2019 went public in September 2018. Calling the release ‘Office 2021’ risks people thinking it’s outdated after only a few months. It would be unlike Microsoft to miss such an obvious marketing trick. Though it’ll be released in the second half of 2021, the new Office will probably be called Office 2022. If Microsoft stopped fixed price Office releases, those customers would defect to a non-Microsoft office suite and that’s something Redmond can’t allow. They will release perpetual licence versions of Office for as long as there is significant demand.

The yearly payment ‘subscription’ is much more profitable for Microsoft so they do everything they can to push that as the ‘only’ option.īut Microsoft also knows there are volume customers who resist the constant changes to Office software and the ongoing costs of annual plans. It was pretty much inevitable that Microsoft would be forced to continue their perpetual licence product line.Īs we’ve mentioned before, Microsoft would very much prefer all customers (individual, business, education and governments) to use their Microsoft 365 annual payment plans. It’s not a surprise that Office 2019 will be upgraded. There’s already been a lot of ill-informed comment about the next ‘fixed’ Office release.

Microsoft word 2022