RIP to Microsoft Workplace, henceforth to be often known as “Microsoft 365”

Microsoft Workplace was first launched in 1990, and except for Home windows, it is in all probability the Microsoft product most of the people has essentially the most expertise with. Particular person apps like Phrase, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook will all live on, however beginning now, the Workplace model title these apps have all been grouped beneath will start to go away, to get replaced by “Microsoft 365.”

The change will come first for the web Workplace apps at Workplace.com, which is able to make the swap in November. In January of 2023, the Workplace app constructed into Home windows 10 and Home windows 11 and the Workplace cellular apps for iOS and Android will observe swimsuit. When up to date, the apps will decide up the Microsoft 365 branding and a brand new emblem, seen above, which nonetheless appears form of like an O, however differently from how the Workplace emblem appears a bit like an O.

Microsoft’s FAQ web page on the transition says that Microsoft 365 will embody the present Workplace apps plus OneDrive and Microsoft Groups “and a lot extra.” The corporate additionally factors out that the Workplace model will live on, at the least for some time. Present Workplace 365 accounts aren’t being renamed (but), and Microsoft will nonetheless promote perpetually licensed variations of Phrase, Excel, and the opposite Workplace apps as Workplace 2021. The corporate has beforehand pledged to supply at the least yet another of those perpetually licensed Workplace suites, however at this level, we do not know whether or not it would proceed to be often known as “Workplace” or if it, too, will decide up “Microsoft 365” branding ultimately.

Workplace is simply the most recent Microsoft product to get a brand new title with “Microsoft” in it. Home windows Defender, the platform’s built-in anti-malware scanner, got here to be often known as Microsoft Defender in mid-2019. This web page is a branding cheat sheet for eight totally different Workplace, Azure, and Microsoft-branded merchandise, seven of which additionally grew to become some model of “Microsoft Defender.” Presumably, manufacturers like Home windows and Xbox are robust sufficient to withstand being rebadged with “Microsoft OS” or “Microsoft Field,” but when the rebranding hammer got here down on Workplace, there isn’t any telling what it would hit subsequent.