Office 365 becomes Microsoft 365 -- a 'subscription service for your life'
Microsoft has done a spot of rebranding today, replacing Office 365 with Microsoft 365, and introducing personal and family subscriptions.
This builds on the foundation of Office 365, but improves on it and adds some useful consumer focused apps and features.
Announcing the changes, and what it refers to as a 'subscription for your life', Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President, Modern Life, Search & Devices, Microsoft says:
Today, we are delighted to announce that on April 21st, Office 365 will become Microsoft 365, the subscription for your life to help you make the most of your time, connect, and protect the ones you love, and to develop and grow. An evolution of Office 365, Microsoft 365 builds on the foundation of Office infusing new artificial intelligence (AI), rich content and templates, and cloud-powered experiences to empower you to become a better writer, presenter, designer, manager of your finances, and deepen your connection to the people in your life. These experiences start rolling out today and will reach the over 38 million Office 365 subscribers over the next few months.
In addition, today we unveiled two new Microsoft 365 experiences that will roll out in preview in the coming months -- a new Microsoft Family Safety app designed to keep your family safe across the digital and physical worlds, and new features in Microsoft Teams that bring you closer to your friends and family to more deeply connect and collaborate on the things that matter most to you.
As well as that, Microsoft Edge will gain a Password Monitor, and Collections, and Microsoft Editor gains a major expansion to help make anyone a better writer. The AI powered service can be accessed by anyone across Word, Outlook.com and the web just by using a Microsoft Account. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers gain access to advanced grammar and style refinements.
There have been a number of improvements made to the Office side of things, and subscribers will also receive limited-time access to popular apps and premium services from the likes of Adobe, Bark, Blinkist, Creative Live, Experian, Headspace, and TeamSnap. Microsoft says the value of this will exceed $500.
The new Office features will begin rolling out to Office 365 subscribers from today.
Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions will be available worldwide on April 21 priced at $6.99 a month. Microsoft 365 Family, for up to six people, promises better value at $9.99 a month.
A subscription includes everything in Office 365, including the desktop Office apps, 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage per person, 60 Skype minutes for calling mobile phones and landlines, and advanced security features.
Will you be subscribing to the new service?