Microsoft Office 365 To Be Updated Every 3 Months

Microsoft Office 365 is slated to receive updates every 3 months, according to Kurt Delbene, the president of Microsoft's Office division. He states that, "We already have the mechanisms in place to update the service on a quarterly basis." The quick updates should make subscribing to Office 365 more appealing to consumers. Delbene was a bit more evasive about whether or not Office 2013 would be updated quarterly as well, but he did say that it's possible.

DelBene stated that the updates will get into a routine of a "major-minor cadence". Some updates will just bring new features, while others will include more "aggressive" changes. Delbene stated that the updates will "get into the short cycle where we can add more features, but then we'll have a longer cycle where we really have to intensively change underpinnings of the services."

An analyst from Gartner, Michael Silver, speculated what the updates could turn out to be like. The updates could skip the major-minor pattern and just update applications within Microsoft Office one at a time. One quarter, Microsoft Word could be updated, and the next could be Excel. The cycle would continue throughout Microsoft's entire list of Office products.

The faster updates will appeal to consumers, especially since most consumers want quick, and rapid updates to their products, whether its their smartphones, tablets, software, and more. Consumers are always anxious to see the next big thing, which is why the smartphone manufacturers shell out a new, flagship product year-after-year, and why recording artists try to dish out a new album at least once per year. But with Microsoft Office, how much can they really add? Silver stated, "But with a 20-year-old product that's so mature, I can't think of really aggressive changes that they might make every year."

[via Computer World]