Microsoft Office 2019

Microsoft’s latest office application – Microsoft Office 2019 – is now available for business customers

Last week, the new release of Microsoft Office 2019 was made available for businesses via the Volume Licensing Portal. The new on-premises version includes important feature updates for users who do not wish to sign up for the Office 365 subscription. Björn Orth from VENDOSOFT sees signs that the cloud is not as prevalent as Microsoft would like us to believe.

Here’s what Microsoft Office 2019 has to offer

Office 2019 contains feature updates that Office 365 users have received monthly over the last three years.
As usual, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are included. OneNote is included for Mac, while Windows users can also enjoy using Access, Publisher, Visio and Project.
Windows users have the possibility to install OneNote as an optional feature.

Major changes in Microsoft Office 2019:

• PowerPoint 2019: new animation features, 4K video export, morph and zoom functions for cinematic presentation effects
• Excel 2019: new formulas and charts for data analysis, new pivot tables
• Word 2019: Read-aloud function, full-screen mode for focused writing
• Outlook 2019: Read-aloud function, optimisation of inbox display

The Windows version of Office 2019 only runs on Microsoft Windows 10 as well as on Windows Server 2016 and 2019, while the Mac version requires macOS Sierra or higher. The operating systems Windows 7 and 8.1 are no longer supported.

Shorter support raises questions about sense in purchasing

According to official statements, Microsoft will not offer 10 years of support for Office 2019 as it does for most of its software products. According to Wikipedia, the company will provide five years of mainstream support plus a further two years of Extended Support. This means that the support will end in 2026, just a year after that of Office 2016.

For software vendor and Microsoft Partner Björn Orth, this raises the question of why companies should even consider this new version – especially as Microsoft will raise the price for Office by about 10 percent. “Companies that want to upgrade from a previous version such as Office 2010 or 2013 should go for Office 2016,” he says. In fact, Office 2016 is much cheaper than Office 2019, contains all the security updates and has the guarantee of being a product that has matured and become reliable. Microsoft Office 2016 is available as used software from VENDOSOFT.

If you want to use Office 2019 and its latest features, you may need to upgrade to Windows 10 to install the software. Björn Orth also advises these companies to purchase used Windows licenses. “Again, there are cost savings of about 30 percent compared to buying new.” Yet, used software is no different to new software.

Is the cloud as popular as everyone thinks?

According to Microsoft’s website: “Office 2019 is a valuable update for customers who aren’t yet ready for the cloud. And each time we release a new on-premises version of Office, customers ask us if this will be our last. We’re pleased to confirm that we’re committed to another on-premises release in the future. While the cloud offers real benefits in productivity, security, and total cost of ownership, we recognize that each customer is at a different point in their adoption of cloud services…“

For Björn Orth, this is an admission that the cloud isn’t selling as successfully as it sounds from Microsoft, especially in small and medium-sized companies. This is also reflected in the development of the used software market, where VENDOSOFT is one of the known providers. “Our customers’ scepticism about the cloud is clear,” says Orth. This often stems from lack of infrastructure.

“There is a lack of bandwidth in many areas,” agrees Joyce Studier. She is a sales professional for VENDOSOFT GmbH and always has her finger on the pulse when it comes to her customers’ problems and concerns. She says that just last week at DILK 2018, the German IT manager conference in Dusseldorf, it was again clear that media and software providers are singing the praises of the cloud more than their potential clients. “There was a lot of discussion in the workshops,” she says. “Many IT managers are put off by the enormous costs and the lack of infrastructure.”

The best recommendation for these companies in the long-term is used software. This applies to the Office applications as well as to Microsoft operating systems and servers.

Soon, as announced by Microsoft, Office 2019 will be followed by Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business 2019, SharePoint 2019, and Project Server 2019, and of course, VENDOSOFT will provide much cheaper second-hand alternatives. They will be found at www.vendosoft.eu/shop.