Any Office 2015 news?

[Mazhar]

I am eagerly awaiting Office 2015, is there any news about it?

[Raa]

Feels like we just got the last one... is there a reason why we need to have new Office suites so fast?

[spy beef]

Bring back Frontpage

[blerk]

 

Office is quite a lot more than just Word.. for example, personally I think Outlook added some nice new features but took a few steps backwards in a few places.. Pasting RTF text into OneNote is.. problematic. Still. (And damnit let me add proper tabs without having to resort to silly autocorrect tricks...) On the plus side the cloud integration is a very nice addition, got them all talking with OneDrive and DropBox seamlessly. But still, lots of little places where things can be improved. Sitting back and stagnating isn't a great thing for a suite to do either.
 
True.. but still, it's miles ahead of 2007 though.. some programs used the ribbon, some were ye olde 95 interface with a nasty blue coat of paint, etc.. a few more refinements and it should be pretty close to perfect. Well, maybe add a "STOP YELLING AT ME" setting like they did with Visual Studio.

 

Hopefully the interface work that they're doing on the touch version also translates to the non-touch version, though I doubt that my annoyance with the settings dialogue boxes will be sorted (I doubt the touch version will even have those options :D )

 

Also I just had another thought - I've been spoiled by the autocorrect/spell-check on my phone (and I hear that the latest WP8.1 is also very good). Hopefully they increase the intelligence of the Spelling & Grammar function in the next Office. Also maybe an option to check for less common (i.e. scientific terms, anatomical locations, etc) words on the internet, as sometimes I have papers that are absolutely full of red squiggly lines and I can't really be bothered going back and checking every one of them. 

 

Feels like we just got the last one... is there a reason why we need to have new Office suites so fast?

Well considering that a new release is about the only hope I'll ever have of them actually fixing some bugs, bring on the releases I say! Also, it probably helps that I have Office 365 so technically I'm not paying for the new releases.

[Max Norris]

Well considering that a new release is about the only hope I'll ever have of them actually fixing some bugs, bring on the releases I say! Also, it probably helps that I have Office 365 so technically I'm not paying for the new releases.

Yep, looking forward to updates myself, I'm hoping they listen to the suggestions and criticism (hey it could happen).. but those that want to stick with it for a good while are covered too, 2010's supported till 2020, 2013's good until 2023. Personally, they can go nuts.

[Mazhar]

Why are you eagerly awaiting a new release? Typing a Word document is no different in Word 2013 vs Word 95. You sound like a enthusiast who craves seeing a splash screen with a new year than actually harnessing any actual value from the products features.

 

Well because I am waiting for some new Outlook features mostly.

[gohpep]

Office Reader, Moorea/Office Remix, Lync Skype integration, updates to Outlook and Sharepoint protocols, features from Office Online, like auto save and real time collaboration, changes to how PowerPoint slideshows are organized

Coming either fall 2014 or summer 2015

[+Asmodai MVC]

That's different then. You were talking about cloud stuff mostly, which Office 365 doesn't necessarily translate to. It is just a licensing model, you can still use the offline apps and keep all of your data locally.

 

Well the comment I initially responded to was:

 

"Wonder how long before the full suite is retired for Office 365 only, hell 90% of the people at work would be fine, guessing most users would be ok also, and they can make more money off subs"

 

I took "the full suite is retired" to mean the retirement of the stand alone apps in favor of the cloud/web based ones.  If that was not what was meant by that comment then that's my mistake.

When I think of Office 365 I don't JUST thing of a licensing model but maybe that's just a misunderstanding on my part.  I'm not sure what's the difference between a volume licensing subscription before Office 365 was created and Office 365 now then.

 

Obviously my company isn't going to some store and buying hundreds of boxes/discs, they volume license.  What they will NOT do is use MS hosted web apps, MS provided cloud storage, etc.  We can't even use Windows Update as all patches are tested internally and then pushed by our sys admins so at no time are our computers ever allowed to just download and install anything from MS or any other outside party.  We are not allowed to use OneDrive or Box or Dropbox or any other external cloud storage (we have internal network storage provided from our internal data centers.)  I seriously doubt that's unusual for large companies, certainly not in my industry but I have no stats on that though so maybe it is.  I do know, majority or not, companies like mine spend A LOT of money on MS products that I would think would be unwise for MS to turn their back on.  I'm pretty sure they would turn their back too because they already did on the mobile side when MS dropped backward compatibility with Windows Mobile 6.x in Windows Phone 7.  We were a total MS shop before then (well, on the client side... we do have *nix based servers in addition to Windows ones) and even started work on porting our mobile apps to Windows Phone 7 but ended up moving to Android instead (largely because of it's support for "side-loading" so we were not required to submit our apps to some MS or Google or any other third party or set up some custom app store interface).

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Well the comment I initially responded to was:

 

"Wonder how long before the full suite is retired for Office 365 only, hell 90% of the people at work would be fine, guessing most users would be ok also, and they can make more money off subs"

 

I took "the full suite is retired" to mean the retirement of the stand alone apps in favor of the cloud/web based ones.  If that was not what was meant by that comment then that's my mistake.

When I think of Office 365 I don't JUST thing of a licensing model but maybe that's just a misunderstanding on my part.  I'm not sure what's the difference between a volume licensing subscription before Office 365 was created and Office 365 now then.

 

Obviously my company isn't going to some store and buying hundreds of boxes/discs, they volume license.  What they will NOT do is use MS hosted web apps, MS provided cloud storage, etc.  We can't even use Windows Update as all patches are tested internally and then pushed by our sys admins so at no time are our computers ever allowed to just download and install anything from MS or any other outside party.  We are not allowed to use OneDrive or Box or Dropbox or any other external cloud storage (we have internal network storage provided from our internal data centers.)  I seriously doubt that's unusual for large companies, certainly not in my industry but I have no stats on that though so maybe it is.  I do know, majority or not, companies like mine spend A LOT of money on MS products that I would think would be unwise for MS to turn their back on.  I'm pretty sure they would turn their back too because they already did on the mobile side when MS dropped backward compatibility with Windows Mobile 6.x in Windows Phone 7.  We were a total MS shop before then (well, on the client side... we do have *nix based servers in addition to Windows ones) and even started work on porting our mobile apps to Windows Phone 7 but ended up moving to Android instead (largely because of it's support for "side-loading" so we were not required to submit our apps to some MS or Google or any other third party or set up some custom app store interface).

It is an issue for a lot of large multinational corporations, for sure.

 

The company I work for is the same way and is hampered heavily by government regulation and contractual obligations. For instance, we often times are barred from storing data on servers here in the USA due to contractual obligations borne out of government regulations placed on our client.

 

For now, Office 365 seems to be primarily a license model where MS is essentially pushing EAs down to the small market sector. It will likely continue on this front, where users get "desktop" or "standalone" applications with license "pings" so they can still market to the large corporations, like ours. I suspect future Office 365 versions, if this already isn't in place, will offer the ability to disable "OneDrive", "Azure" and etc very easily on "enterprise" variations.

 

Too many regulations prevent most large corporations from going over to the cloud model entirely. This space will be dominated by private clouds and, occasionally, hybrid clouds. The full on cloud model is aimed at the small market where they don't have regulatory burden and are too cash starved to build alternative solutions.

[Harrison H.]

It is an issue for a lot of large multinational corporations, for sure.

 

The company I work for is the same way and is hampered heavily by government regulation and contractual obligations. For instance, we often times are barred from storing data on servers here in the USA due to contractual obligations borne out of government regulations placed on our client.

 

For now, Office 365 seems to be primarily a license model where MS is essentially pushing EAs down to the small market sector. It will likely continue on this front, where users get "desktop" or "standalone" applications with license "pings" so they can still market to the large corporations, like ours. I suspect future Office 365 versions, if this already isn't in place, will offer the ability to disable "OneDrive", "Azure" and etc very easily on "enterprise" variations.

 

Too many regulations prevent most large corporations from going over to the cloud model entirely. This space will be dominated by private clouds and, occasionally, hybrid clouds. The full on cloud model is aimed at the small market where they don't have regulatory burden and are too cash starved to build alternative solutions.

 

The storage of data in the US is soon enough not going to be an issue for you then. Microsoft is already working on, and I believe very close to finishing, the ability to control exactly what datacenters your data is stored in.

 

As far as Office 365 and OneDrive goes, you can already disable this functionality. They actually just recently changed it so you can even exclude certain apps from being installed when you install the subscription version. Previously you could only pick Office as a whole. Now you can exclude each individual application as you want. There is no "Azure" feature to remove. Azure is the backend for any of the cloud services. If all you are looking for is the subscription of Office, you can do that without purchasing any of the cloud services. Just because everything is under the Office 365 brand, doesn't mean you can't buy just the feature set that you want.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

The storage of data in the US is soon enough not going to be an issue for you then. Microsoft is already working on, and I believe very close to finishing, the ability to control exactly what datacenters your data is stored in.

 

As far as Office 365 and OneDrive goes, you can already disable this functionality. They actually just recently changed it so you can even exclude certain apps from being installed when you install the subscription version. Previously you could only pick Office as a whole. Now you can exclude each individual application as you want. There is no "Azure" feature to remove. Azure is the backend for any of the cloud services. If all you are looking for is the subscription of Office, you can do that without purchasing any of the cloud services. Just because everything is under the Office 365 brand, doesn't mean you can't buy just the feature set that you want.

It is a lot more complicated than that. Since we're a company that does business with many large corporations we have a lot of issues that have to be taken into account. We also deal with data on the employees on behalf of these companies so it comes with a lot of red tape, as expected.

 

Azure and "the cloud" just isn't feasible for us. No matter how nice Microsoft makes it.