Office 2019 was announced on the 26th of September during Microsoft Ignite at the most recent TechEd event. New features were advertised and improvements to PowerPoint and Excel were revealed. We predict that Office 2019 will include a few or even many features of EMS, Microsoft Enterprise Mobility and Security.

When Will It Be Released?

Microsoft hasn't released an official release date or price for Office 2019. Many online speculators predict that testing and preview versions will be released mid-2018 and then the official public release being somewhere in the second half of 2018. Microsoft have stated that they will release more details in the coming months, so until then most features and aspects of Office 2019 are speculation.

What New Features Could Be Included?

Microsoft revealed that they would be including new and improved "inking" features, for users that use a pen or stylus input, improvements would include: pressure sensitivity, tilt effects and ink replay. They also confirmed that they would be adding new animation and visual features for PowerPoint such as Morph and Zoom as well as enhancing formulas for data analysis and charts in Excel.

A small collection of vague improvements for Window's servers include IT manageability, security, voice controls and usability. Microsoft also talked about how they'd like to move everything to the cloud but also understood several users desires to keep their versions of Office locally managed. Microsoft addressed these desires by saying that Office 2019 could be bought and act as an upgrade to current, local Office apps.

What New EMS Features Could Be Included?

We predict that Microsoft will include new features from their EMS (Enterprise Mobility and Security) products. Some of these features include: Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, Microsoft Cloud App security, Azure Information Protection and Microsoft Active Threat Analytics. Enterprise Mobility and Security may be recognised by previous users by its old name: Microsoft Mobility Suite, but since these new security measures have been added, Microsoft have renamed it to the new Microsoft Mobility and Security.

Many of the new features that could be added into the new Office 2019 include programs that focus on "front door" defence. These features, including Azure Active Directory Identity Protection and Azure Active Directory Privileged Identity Management, will allow admins to view and allow risk based and measured access to their devices. This risk has been generated from the billions of signals gathered and analysed by Microsoft.

If these features are added to Office 2019 then admins will be able to secure their devices in a much more manageable way than in previous versions of Office. Other features that could be added include Microsoft Cloud app security which will increase the security of online storage and permission based access, Microsoft Active threat analysis will also detect potential threats before they occur so security can be reinforced before a breach is made.

All these new features of EMS and more could be on their way in 2018 but of course this is all speculation and we will not know for certain, closer to the time when Microsoft confirms what other features will be added.

If you want to be ready and set up for Office 2019 when it comes out, give us a call!

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