Microsoft Really Doesn't Want You To Buy Office 2019 (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft today launched a marketing campaign pitting Office 2019 and Office 365 against each other. The goal? To prove Office 2019 isn't worth buying -- you and your company should go with Office 365 instead. In a series of three videos, twins Jeremy and Nathan calculate the differences in Excel, Cynni and Tanny present their findings in PowerPoint, while Scott and Sean type it out in Word. The ads are cringe-worthy, to say the least, but they do get the point across.

When Microsoft announced Office 2019 in September 2017, the company said the productivity suite was "for customers who aren't yet ready for the cloud." And when Microsoft launched Office 2019 in September 2018, the company promised it wouldn't be the last: "We're committed to another on-premises release in the future." And yet, Microsoft would much rather you join the ranks of Office 365's 33.3 million subscribers. If you must, Office 2019 is available for purchase. But Office 365 is really what the company wants you to buy.

Comments

SaaS is news?

[UnknownSoldier]

Gee, Software as a Service, aka monthly software rental fees, where Microsoft can nickel and dime you every month is a surprise?

The entire software industry is moving this direction. Adobe, JetBrains, etc.

Why is this news?

Re:they are half right........

[Thelasko]

LibreOffice is perfect for occasional home use, or a student writing a term paper. In a corporate environment, Microsoft Office is still a requirement.

The subscription model may be more profitable for Microsoft overall, but I have a hunch it will lose market share for cases that use the software casually. The same users that we hurt when Microsoft abandoned Works in 2009. Microsoft has opened up a nice niche for LibreOffice. Even though it's not as good as MS Office, it's much better than Works ever was.

Re:45% of software features are used

[Hadlock]

With the sole exception of a business case report i had to write for a software package acquisition in...2014? I can't think of the last time I needed a formal word processor. Even then it wasn't strictly necessary.
 
Most of my documents now (2017-2019) are written in markdown, which although there are a couple of competing standards, most parsers can accurately render 99%+ of documents legibly. It's no PDF but is a pretty portable standard.
 
I still use excel-type spreadsheet software to calculate personal finance projects but the sum, average functions are pretty bog standard
 
After that you have what, powerpoint? Depending on company culture you might do 80% of your real work in an app like this...
 
Finally there's the mystery meat fourth app, which might be somethinng like MS Access, or MS Project or... MS Notes? Visio? Who the hell knows, whatever it is, you're probably better off using something else instead.
 
I feel like the word processor is a dead segment, most "documents" I get these days are just well formatted emails, most spreadsheets are generic and interchangable, but powerpoint slideshow apps might be the one vendor lock-in left for office?

Re:they are half right........

[UnderCoverPenguin]

In a corporate environment, Microsoft Office is still a requirement.

At least where I work, nearly all the technical people are using LibreOffice - many of us are using it on Linux, though we all have "office PCs" for access to corporate email and several "business apps" we are forced to use.

Anyway, the MS Office users in the company don't seem to notice. And any compatibility issues they do encounter are no worse than what they encounter in documents from customers and suppliers, who use different versions of MS Office, some as old as 2007. MS Office inter-version is often poor. We usually hear more complaints about outside documents than ones from the tech staff.