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Microsoft to 'reinvent productivity'

Dubai - Tech giant says new Office 2016 suite will 'take the work out of working'

Technology bellwether Microsoft will launch its new Office 2016 suite in the UAE on Wednesday, promising to redefine the way users become more productive in all their endeavours.
"One of our three company ambitions is to reinvent productivity. Nowhere is this more obvious than with Office for businesses," Ihsan Anabtawi, regional manager for applications and services at Microsoft Gulf, told Khaleej Times in an e-mailed response to questions on Tuesday ahead of Wednesday's event to be held at Microsoft's Dubai headquarters.
"The new Office was built by the new Microsoft... collaborating, sharing ideas to make them bigger and better - it is the way of the new workplace. The new Office enables people to focus on progress, not process - it takes the work out of working."
The Office 2016 apps - the follow-up to Office 2013 available for Office 365 subscribers and which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and many others - are now available. Microsoft is looking to gain more ground in the market with its new product.
Data provided by Anabtawi show that Microsoft has an installed base of 1.2 billion people using Office, which is roughly one out of seven people on the planet. Of this, about 25 per cent is now on Office 365; premium workloads make up over 57 per cent of its installed base.
Office 365 consumer subscriptions grew 22 per cent in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2015, from 12.4 million to 15.2 million, while commercial subscribers rocketed 74 per cent year-on-year in the same period. The Office 365 commercial business is on an over $5.4 billion run rate, up 63 per cent year-on-year as of the same quarter. Furthermore, 83 per cent of Fortune 500 companies are using Office 365.
"Microsoft's aspirations are simple: continue to grow and build a vibrant community of billions of people who love and rely on Microsoft experiences across all aspects of their daily lives," Anabtawi said.
"Our strategy is to drive a virtuous cycle of usage [of our services], value [to customers] and learning [so we can make our services smarter]. We've long been the preferred productivity suite on the desktop - this new release is just the beginning of what the new Office has to offer."
Microsoft added new features on Office 365 that further enhances its strategy to build more teamwork among its users, including Skype in-app integration, groups in Outlook and - perhaps the most stand-out feature - co-authoring and real-time typing in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, which gives the ability to see what others are typing in real-time within the client apps.
Excel 2016, meanwhile, now includes integrated publishing to Power BI and new modern chart-types to help you make the most of your data.
Tell Me helps find the right Office feature or command quickly, while Smart Lookup brings insights from the Web right into documents. Previously available only in Office Online, Tell Me and Smart Lookup are now available across the Office 2016 client apps. Also included is 1TB of OneDrive storage.
- alvin@khaleejtimes.com