Three years ago at Ignite, Microsoft announced Office 2019, its latest version of Office that can be purchased on a perpetual license, meaning that you own it forever. Now here we are, three years later, and it"s being announced that there"s a new version on the way.
Some speculated three years ago that Office 2019 was to be the last perpetual license version of the product, with Microsoft"s push to get users onto Office 365 (now Microsoft 365), its subscription-based licensing model. Microsoft was always careful not to confirm this though, always saying that it would gauge the market. If businesses still don"t want to move to Microsoft 365, then the Redmond firm will keep churning out new versions of Office.
All the company said is that this new version will be available for Windows and Mac, but it didn"t say the name of the product. Based on what we"ve seen, it will likely be called Office 2022.
Microsoft also talked up its next versions of server products, like Exchange Server. The company is recommending that those on Exchange Server 2013 or 2016 start making plans to upgrade to Exchange Server 2019, promising that that"s the last major upgrade they"ll ever need to do. The next version will support in-place upgrades from Exchange Server 2019 for at least two years.