Microsoft Office 2010 Reaches Beta, Bringing Productivity Gains to the PC, Phone and Browser

LOS ANGELES — Nov. 18, 2009 — Earlier this year Microsoft introduced the technical preview program for Microsoft Office 2010, the next version of Microsoft Office and related products, which are designed to deliver the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser; help people work better together; and give them new capabilities to bring their ideas to life with text, video and images.

Kurt DelBene, senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft.
Kurt DelBene, senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft.

Following the successful technical preview program, today at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) Microsoft is unveiling the public beta of Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, Office Web Apps for businesses and Office Mobile 2010.

PressPass spoke with Kurt DelBene, senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft, who announced the Office news in his keynote address at PDC, to ask him about the new release and what it means for the developer community.

PressPass: Can you tell us more details about what you are announcing today?

DelBene: We’re excited to announce the public beta of the 2010 versions of Office, SharePoint Server, Visio, Project and Office Web Apps for business customers. Office Mobile 2010 has also reached the beta milestone. Starting today people can download the beta products by visiting http://www.microsoft.com/2010.

We are hoping to have millions of people download and test the products, as we depend on that feedback to shape the final product. To get the broadest range of feedback we are making this beta available in seven languages — English, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, French and German — more than any other Office beta program in the past.

Office Mobile 2010 is also now available in beta, making the Office experience across the PC, phone and browser a reality. Office Mobile 2010 includes mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and new SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010, and is available worldwide in Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

We’re also announcing several new features in Office 2010. One key new offering is the Outlook Social Connector, which brings communications history, business collaboration and social network feeds directly into Outlook, with support for Windows Live and SharePoint Server. For developers, we’re also releasing the Outlook Social Connector SDK to help them easily build connectors to third-party social networks, and we’re pleased to announce today that professional network LinkedIn will be the first site to provide a connector for Outlook Social Connector early next year.

Finally, building on the strength and success of its ongoing partnership with SAP, Microsoft also announced plans to deliver a new product named Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP. With tens of thousands of joint customers around the world, bringing SAP applications and business processes together with Microsoft SharePoint creates the opportunity to release a new wave of productivity gains for end users. Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP will provide customers and partners with the opportunity to compose solutions based upon Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and SAP, enable additional interoperability, and blend the worlds of process and collaboration. The solution is planned to be released in the second half of 2010.
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