Pour one out for Microsoft Office – it’s being phased out. Not the products, of course, but the brand. Microsoft Office is being renamed to Microsoft 365. The apps will be part of Microsoft 365 rather than Microsoft Office, and office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows will be the Microsoft 365 app.
It’s not entirely gone yet – Office bundles will still be called that for now, although they are a legacy brand. The changes start next month.
Why do we care?
This is actually quite a big deal. The productivity space is hot, the work layer is where the interest is for both software companies and for IT services companies, and Microsoft’s commitment here is obvious… put your major brand, Microsoft itself, behind this core set of technologies. That’s your strategic takeaway – they’re leaning into their primary brand, and the idea is to associate the Microsoft name to those core applications, which are now even more important than their Windows business from a positioning perspective.
Office is a very, very well known brand, and the 365 branding a lot less so. Time will tell if this is the smart play – I’ll admit skepticism and say I think this is wasting a core marketing asset, but they both didn’t ask me… and it’s a lot less important than understanding their priorities.