Microsoft announced the next major release of its office application suite, Office 2019. The release is scheduled for the second half of 2018.
The company announced the news during its Microsoft Ignite conference held this week in Orlando, Florida. The suite will include regulars like PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, and Excel, as well as server versions of SharePoint, Skype for Business, and Exchange.
The release is targeting people and organizations who are not using the cloud-based Office 365. While many companies and users have adopted cloud-based computing, Microsoft recognizes that the switch from offline storage to cloud is a process that not everyone can undertake at the same time. Jared Spataro, the general manager for Office, acknowledged this in a statement.
"Cloud-powered innovation is a major theme at Ignite this week," said Spataro. "But we recognize that moving to the cloud is a journey with many considerations along the way. Office 2019 will be a valuable upgrade for customers who feel that they need to keep some or all of their apps and servers on-premises."
The new Office will include a number of IT features and server upgrades that will improve its usability, manageability, security, and voice. There will be enhanced inking features like ink replay, tilt effects, and pressure sensitivity, all of which will allow users to work on the applications more naturally.
Excel will be getting new formulas and charts that will make data analysis in the program more powerful, while PowerPoint will get new visual animation content like Morph and Zoom.
Microsoft is planning on releasing a preview version of the Office 2019 in the middle of 2018. At the moment, the exact official launch date of the new software suite has not been announce. The company has not revealed its pricing as well.
The last major update the Microsoft released for the Office was in 2015 with the Office 2016.
