At its Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 have reached the technical preview engineering milestone. Starting today, tens of thousands of people will be invited to test Office and Visio as part of the Technical Preview program.
“Office 2010 is the premier productivity solution across PCs, mobile phones and browsers,” said Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft. “From broadcast and video editing in PowerPoint, new data visualization capabilities in Excel, and co-authoring in Word, we are delivering technology to help people work smarter and faster from virtually any location using any device.”
Office 2010 and related products will deliver innovative capabilities and provide new levels of flexibility and choice that will help people:
- Work anywhere with Office Web applications -” the lightweight Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote -” that provide access to documents from virtually anywhere and preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of device.
- Collaborate better with co-authoring in Microsoft Word 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft OneNote 2010, and advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Microsoft Outlook 2010, including the option for users to “ignor”unwanted threads.
- Bring ideas to life with video and picture editing, broadcast capability in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, easy document preparation through the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, and new Sparklines in Microsoft Excel 2010 to visualize data and spot trends more quickly.
Microsoft announced that it is streamlining the number of Office editions from eight to five and enhancing each edition with additional applications and features.
Office Comes to the Web
Less than a week after Google said it would shipping a new OS for PC in the coming year, MS has countered with the news that Office will be coming to the Web with move features than Google Docs.
The Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for all Office volume licensing customers including more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.
