What is Microsoft Office "14"?

Microsoft Office "14" is the next version of Microsoft’s office productivity suite (or what Microsoft calls the 2007 Microsoft Office System).

Is Office "14" the final name for the next version of Microsoft Office?

No, Office "14" is only a codename, the final name for the product will be decided later in the development cycle.

When will Office "14" ship?

Microsoft plans to release Office "14" in the first half of 2009, about to years after the consumer launch of Office 2007.

What about the beta?

Microsoft is planning to ship Office "14" beta 1 in the first half of 2008 and Office "14" beta 2 in the second half of 2008.

What features are expected to be included in Office "14"?

The current focus points at this time are as follows.

1. Individual Impact
Objective: Continued focus on individual productivity and effectiveness

Microsoft will continue to invest in providing tools for individuals to be productive and effective. The company will be working to make individuals more self-sufficient by enabling them to perform more sophisticated tasks themselves and providing more self and community-based help options. Office 14 will include improved search relevancy and refinement of the result-oriented database.

2. Communication and Collaboration
Objective: Enable better communication and more efficient information sharing to keep communities, co-workers, partners and customers in sync

Microsoft will continue to invest in team effectiveness and will be expanding this to include further unification of communications and the ability to work easily with partners and customers. There will be deeper Unified Communications integration with Office 14, including capabilities that make communications and collaboration more convenient to the user (regardless of device or connectivity) and manageable by IT (through unified identity and robust policy/compliance support).

3. Enterprise Content Management
Objective: Author, Manage and Organize Complex Documents and Content

Microsoft will expand what it provided in Office 2007 for document management to allow better management of complex documents and content. The company will be making sure it keeps the overhead of document management to a minimum and that it is simple for end users to participate in document management processes. Office 14 will include a flexible storage solution for Digital Asset Management.

4. Business Process and Business Intelligence
Objective: Make the right information available throughout the business processes

Microsoft will make it easy to find, analyze and use the expertise and data hidden within an organization and its business systems to make better informed decisions personally and within a team, while continuing to work within a business process or workflow. Office 14 will bring business intelligence (BI) to business processes, instead of having BI as an isolated and as-needed activity.

5. Office Business Platform
Objective: Make it simple to build client & web-based business applications

For corporate developers, Microsoft will deliver a platform on which they can easily build and deliver rich solutions that incorporate workflow, business system integration and Office client familiarity. Office 14 will include Declarative Programming advances and improved Business Data Catalog (BDC) integration.

6. Manageability and Security
Objective: Make it easy to deploy and manage around the globe

Microsoft has made great strides in the last few years on the security, reliability, and deployment of Office, and will continue to invest in these fundamentals. Microsoft will also continue to make global deployments easier with federated, offline and virtualized models. Office 14 will further improve offline experience in products such as SharePoint and assist global deployments via federated and virtualized deployments.