MS-Next

And speaking of first details about an upcoming Microsoft release, this week, Stephen Chapman published the first report about the next version of Microsoft Office, Office 14 on the AeroXperience forum. (Office 2007 was code-named Office 12; apparently Microsoft is skipping 13 for superstitious reasons.) According to the report–which is pretty general because the product isn’t due for more than two years–Office 14 will focus on individual impact (i.e., productivity), communication and collaboration, enterprise content management, business process and business intelligence, the Office platform (i.e., Office for developers), manageability, and security. This information is based on an internal Microsoft presentation that Chapman came across somewhere in his travels and is clearly the real deal. (If you’ve seen one Microsoft slide deck, you’ve seen them all.) The only concrete information in the presentation is the schedule: Microsoft expects to ship Office 14 Beta 1 in the first half of 2008, Office 14 Beta 2 in the second half of 2008, and the final version of Office 14 in the first half of 2009. Maybe it’s time for an Office 14 FAQ, too.

Source: Windowsitpro