Download Now!!! Office 14 Goes Alpha

Ships to testers

Although with Windows Vista and the Office 2007 System, Microsoft appeared to have synchronized the development cycles of its main cash cows, while the Beta for Windows 7 is already available for the general public, the Alpha for Office 14 has only shipped to a select pool of testers. However, the Redmond company did manage to provide official confirmation that Office 14 had debuted into Alpha stage. Up to this point in time the software giant has offered no additional information on the Office 14 Alpha testing process.

“[On January 13] Microsoft provided a select group of customers early access to an Alpha version of Office server technologies. However, Microsoft is not disclosing information about the timing for a Beta version at this time,” a spokesperson for the company revealed, cited first by Mary Jo Foley.

Office 14 is the codename for the next version of the Office system, and, in this regard, the successor of Office 2007, which has been codenamed Office 12. Microsoft simply skipped a beat, namely the unlucky 13, which was supposed to be the next version, and jumped straight to v14.

The Alpha release of Office 14 is not really intended to gather feedback from testers. The Redmond company is aiming to deliver customers with a taste of what Office 14 will bring to the table. As an integral part of the Office 14 Alpha, it is delivering early development milestones of SharePoint, Office Web applications, and even a new edition of the productivity suite dubbed Office for Sales.

Office 14 will be, even more than Windows 7, at a crossroads, meaning that, for the first time, Microsoft is creating the productivity suite not as a product anchored on the desktop, but stretching into the cloud. At the end of October 2008, the software giant revealed that, with Office 14, the productivity suite would extend into the Cloud via the browser. The company did not provide a deadline for the delivery of the final version of Office 14, but it looks like the product is planned for release either at the end of 2009, or at the start of 2010.

“As part of the next release of Office, we’re announcing that Microsoft will deliver Office Web applications – lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote – through a browser. With these new applications, people can use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents. What’s great is that this provides a consistent Office experience when and where our customers want it, regardless of whether they are accessing their Office documents through the PC, phone, or browser,” Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Microsoft Business Division, stated.

In order to get an idea of what it would be like to use a “software plus services” Office 14, take a look at the video below, which discusses Exchange 14.

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