Stefan Mileschin

Will you just look at our cloud?

Software king of the world Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign which appears designed to discourage users from buying Office 2019 and get them to move to Office 365 instead.

The adverts show twins Jeremy and Nathan calculating the differences in Excel, Cynni and Tanny present their findings in PowerPoint, while Scott and Sean type it out in Word. It is the usual out-of-touch American marketing ad but they appear to be showing a change of heart in the Vole Hill.

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.”

It would appear that Vole would rather you sign up to be among Office 365’s 33.3 million subscribers. Office 2019 is available for purchase but Microsoft really wants you to buy 365.

But this year, the company is hoping to win over enterprises to the cloud with AI features.

One ad points out that Office 365 includes fully-installed Office applications — the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

“But those apps keep getting better over time, with new capabilities delivered every month. Most importantly, Office 365 is connected to the cloud, so you can access your content from any device, co-author with anyone in real-time (regardless of whether or not they’ve purchased a copy of Office) and use the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to create impactful content with less effort. On the flipside, Office 2019 also delivers full installs of the Office apps we know and love — but they’re “frozen in time.” They don’t ever get updated with new features, and they’re not cloud-connected. Also, Office 2019 doesn’t support real-time co-authoring across apps, and it doesn’t have the amazing AI-powered capabilities that come with Office 365.”

https://fudzilla.com/news/memory-and...es-office-2019