Microsoft announced that it will release Microsoft in 2021 Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) and Office 2021 , for customers who do not want an Office 365 cloud subscription service and prefer a one-time purchase.
A commercial review of Microsoft Office LTSC will be available in April 2021. The official versions of Office LTSC (for large enterprises) and Office 2021 (for home users and small companies) are expected to be released in the second half of 2021.
"Both Office LTSC and Windows 10 LTSC will remain in Fixed Lifecycle Police," said vice president Jared Spataro.
Both products will be supported for five years, as Microsoft has reduced their lifecycle from 10 to 5 years.
According to the information available so far, the next version of Office will be available for Windows and Mac users, with support for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
Microsoft has not provided details on the features and changes that the new Office 2021 will contain, but Office LTSC will support dark mode and include accessibility improvements and features such as Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel.
Spataro said that Office 2021 will be available as a “one-time purchase” at the same price as previous versions.
Regarding Microsoft's announcement about reducing the Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC lifecycle from ten to five years, users who want to keep their devices on the same version of Windows for a longer period of time will need to switch to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC releases, which will still be supported for 10 years.
Source: Bleeping Computer
