Microsoft Launches Office 2010 for Businesses

Almost a month after it released the next generation of its productivity suite to manufacturing, Microsoft is launching Office 2010 worldwide. However, despite the fact that, as of today, May 12th, 2010, Office 2010 and additional products related to the suite have hit the global-availability milestone, only business customers are able to actually buy the successor of Office 2007. End users will need to wait at least another month, as Office 2010 will only hit retail availability in June 2010.

In addition to Office 2010, Microsoft is also offering businesses worldwide the RTM versions of SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010. In fact, some customers have already been able to buy and download Office 2010 RTM from the software giant for quite some time, starting with MSDN and TechNet subscribers, which got access to the bits a few days after the productivity suite was wrapped up.

“As information work evolves in response to external trends and technological innovations, the tools for information work must evolve as well. Microsoft Office, as the primary vehicle by which people experience Business Productivity Infrastructure (BPI) capabilities, continues to expand to support the changing requirements of businesses and information workers around collaboration, mobility and secure access to business data, while providing value, simplicity and integration throughout the BPI stack,” Microsoft stated.

“Over the years, Microsoft Office has provided increasingly richer capabilities through integration with back-end server components such as Microsoft SharePoint. Office 2010 continues this evolution. Though good results can be achieved using Office 2007 applications with SharePoint 2007, the highest level of value and capabilities can be realized through the integration of Microsoft Office 2010 with SharePoint 2010,” the company added.

Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, will be the one announcing the worldwide availability of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, with an emphasis on the fact that the two offerings represent the future of business productivity. One of the strongest selling points for Office 2010 is that the productivity suite is not limited to the PC, but stretches to smartphones and to the Cloud, with Office Web Apps.