Earlier this week at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando (Florida), the software giant announced Office 2019 — the next "perpetual update" for Office. This release, scheduled for the second half of 2018, will include perpetual versions of the Office apps (including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) and servers (including Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business). Previews of the new products will start shipping mid-year 2018.

Unlike Office 365, which has become an ever-updating service, Office 2019 will add new user and IT capabilities for customers who aren’t yet ready for the cloud, presumably as some sort of compromise. New formulae and charts will make data analysis for Excel more powerful. Some industry commentators believe this version of Excel 2019 will be a roll-up of all new Office 365 features to date, although this is not confirmed as yet. If this is true, then this would fit with Microsoft's push to get customers onto its existing subscription model, Office 365.

The company said IT departments will also appreciate "service enhancements [that] include updates to IT manageability, usability, voice, and security". Maybe we will get a different coloured screen of death?

Microsoft will release more information about Office 2019 over the next few months. Watch this space.