Office 2016 Launches on September 22, Brings Branch Updating Capabilities

The rumors are true, and, we have to Microsoft to thank for confirming.

Microsoft today has officially announced that Office 2016 will begin rollout on September 22 – just a couple weeks from now.

In a blog post announcement, Julia White, says…

You may have heard the rumors, but today I’m happy to confirm that Office 2016 will be broadly available starting on September 22nd. If you have a volume licensing agreement in place, you can download Office 2016 from the Volume Licensing Service Center starting October 1st.

Additionally, Julia goes into the servicing model changes for Office 2016, which looks striking familiar – because it is. As we've seen with the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft continues to move its products into different rings of distribution. In the case of businesses, these rings exhibit themselves as branches.

Office 2016 will follow the same approach, bringing an always up-to-date Current Branch updating mechanism and a new Current Branch for Business. CBB will offer three cumulative feature updates per year, while continuing to offer monthly security updates.