Microsoft has announced at its Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, being held in New Orleans, that Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 have reached the technical preview engineering milestone. Starting today, tens of thousands of people will be invited to test Office and Visio as part of the Technical Preview program.

“Office 2010 gives Irish customers the freedom to choose how they work - on their PC, via a web browser or via mobile phone,” said Richard Moore, Information Worker Business Group Lead at Microsoft. “Office 2010 brings great new features – including better data visualisation in Excel, document co-authoring in Word and presentation broadcasting directly from PowerPoint. These new features – in conjunction with the new flexible deployment options – ensures Office will be the premier productivity platform for business customers and consumers alike.”

Office 2010 and related products will deliver innovative capabilities and provide new levels of flexibility and choice that will help people:

· Work anywhere with Office Web applications — the lightweight Web browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that provide access to documents from virtually anywhere and preserve the look and feel of a document regardless of device.

· Collaborate better with co-authoring in Microsoft Word 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft OneNote 2010, and advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Microsoft Outlook 2010, including the option for users to ”ignore” unwanted threads.

· Bring ideas to life with video and picture editing, broadcast capability in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, easy document preparation through the new Microsoft Office Backstage view, and new Sparklines in Microsoft Excel 2010 to visualize data and spot trends more quickly.

Microsoft also announced that it is streamlining the number of Office editions from eight to five and enhancing each edition with additional applications and features. The company also announced that Office Web applications will be available in three ways: through Windows Live, where more than 400 million consumers will have access to Office Web applications at no cost; on-premises for the more than 90 million Office annuity customers; and via Microsoft Online Services, where customers will be able to purchase a subscription as part of a hosted offering.

Partner Opportunities

Microsoft also is preparing partners for the release of Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 through a number of new and refreshed readiness tools and training programs. These include the Ignite program for SharePoint, Office and Exchange; Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization (BPIO) University; Masters and Architect Certification for SharePoint; new Partner Business Productivity Online Services features and distributor model; and Exchange 2010 Readiness Webcast Series and Demo Showcase. More information on these programs can be found at http://partner.microsoft.com/businessproductivity. 

Availability

All Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference attendees will receive invitations to participate in the Technical Preview program. Office 2010 and related products will be available in the first half of 2010. More information about Office 2010 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/Office2010.