Office 14: Get ready for a first taste

Just because Office 14 won't be fully released until next year doesn't mean consumers will have to wait that long to try out the products.

In an interview this week senior VP Chris Capossela said Microsoft will offer more details on the beta "relatively soon", noting that Office has traditionally made its products available to millions of testers well before the final version ships.

"That's been true of the suite," he said. "That will certainly be true of the suite this time and of the web apps."

With Office 14, Microsoft has said it will offer desktop versions of Excel, Word, OneNote and PowerPoint, as well as versions that can run online in a browser, be it Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox. Office will then, for the first time, also work on both Linux and Apple's iPhone.

Although CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts last week that Office 14 won't come out this year, Microsoft has already started testing some of the components that make up the Office 14 wave of products. Capossela wouldn't go into too many specifics about when Office 14 will ship but said Microsoft hoped not to be too far beyond its typical cycle which sees new versions roughly every three years.

"I don't think Office 14 is going to be wildly different," Capossela said. "Office has had a pretty predictable ship rate and I think we will continue with that."

The last version of Office, Office 2007 was finalised and made available to large businesses in late 2006 and had its consumer launch with Windows Vista in January 2007.

As for the new web-based products, Capossela reiterated that they are already being tested "with a small set of people".

"We will look to expand that number relatively soon," he said.

For businesses, though, Capossela said Microsoft is competing well with its current suite, Office 2007. Although the company had some high-profile customers consider a move to Google Apps, Capossela said that the pressure has actually waned somewhat.

"The bloom is off the rose I would say when it comes to Google in the enterprise," he said. "Last year there was a nice...

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