Knock Knock… Who’s there? Office 2010!
One of the reasons I like attending conferences like TechEd is that very often attendees get news first… either by design or occasionally by accident. An example of the latter, I learned last night, is that one presenter accidentally showed off SharePoint 2010 to a packed room without realizing that it was strictly embargoed. Oops!
A better (or at least more positive) example is that it was announced today that attendees at TechEd 2009 will be the first invited to a Technical Preview Program for Office 2010, the long anticipated successor to the highly successful (not only in my opinion) Office 2007. Unfortunately we are going to have to wait until July for it.
Office 2007 was a major release. it introduced two huge changes over its predecessors: the ribbon toolbar (love it or hate it, it is here to stay!) and the new xml-based file formats. I have read others who do not feel that Office 2010 will consist of any changes as major as those. I disagree. There are two bits that will be introduced with 2010 which I consider major changes:
- Office 2010 will be the first edition of the hugely successful application suite to offer a x64 (64-bit) edition in addition to the x86 (32-bit) version. Historically the x86 application suite installed on 64-bit operating systems in the C:\Program Files (x86) directory. With the direction of the computing world firmly heading toward 64-bit computing I am glad to see that the applications that most of us use most frequently are following the same trend.
- With Office 2010 Microsoft will also be releasing web-based editions of the suite (known as Office Web Applications). I suspect that these will be offered both for companies to host their own application servers on IIS 7 rather than on a Terminal Services platform, in addition to hosted environments (cloud computing). Along with I suspect millions of others I have been using Outlook Web Access through two generations now (If memory serves it was introduced with Exchange 2000; I came on board with 2003) I am excited to see what its fellow applications will look like on-line.
Some of the rumors I have heard about 2010 are that it is blindingly fast (one commentator said uncomfortably so) and that it is much prettier than its predecessor. That I will wait to see, but in the meantime if you are like me and are not tired of having sore feet from living on the bleeding edge then look for Office 2010 beta to open to the public (i.e. those of you not at TechEd) sometime nearer the fall. See you there!
Read the complete post at http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2009/05/13/knock-knock-who-s-there-office-2010.aspx