New MS Office on shelves next year

By Staff Writer for Microsoft
Johannesburg, 17 Apr 2009

The next suite of Microsoft Office products will be commercially available in the third quarter of 2010.

In a statement issued this morning, the company confirmed the new Office will be under technical review later this year. Microsoft explains the focus of the new suite will be availability across devices.

"The line between home and work has blurred, and people want more choice and flexibility in how, where and when they work. People will be more productive across the PC, phone and browser; IT professionals can choose to deploy and manage servers on-premises or from the cloud; and developers get more opportunities to build innovative solutions and grow their business," says Danie Gordon, product manager at Microsoft SA.

Alongside its Office announcement, the company opened the public download of a beta version of its Exchange Server 2010, expected to be on sale from the second half of this year.

Gordon says the new Exchange has been built from the ground up and has focused heavily on unified communications. "Exchange 2010 ushers in the next generation of Microsoft unified communications software as the first server designed from inception to work both on-premises and as an online service."

According to Gordon, Exchange 2010, when combined with Outlook 2010, will give people more control over their communications. He says it is built with features like MailTips, which warns users before they commit an e-mail faux pas such as sending mail to large distribution groups, to recipients who are out of the office, or to recipients outside the organisation.

It also has the ability to preview voice mail directly in Outlook in a text format, while the "Ignore Conversation" is an e-mail "mute button" that allows people to remove themselves from an irrelevant e-mail string, reducing unwanted e-mail and runaway reply-all threads.

The new e-mail archive is a powerful tool to address compliance issues, says Gordon. "As e-mail volume grows, companies must address increasing compliance, legal and e-discovery concerns. According to Osterman Research, only 28% of organisations currently archive their e-mail content."