Microsoft makes Office 2013 available to volume licensees

Microsoft has pushed out the final, released-to-manufacturing (RTM) bits of Office 2013 and the complementary 2013 servers (Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Lync 2013) to volume license customers this week.

A few Microsoft customers notified me of availability via Twitter on October 30. (I think @danielgut was the first to do so. Thanks!)

Microsoft officials confirmed that volume licensees can download the code now. A spokesperson sent the following statement via e-mail:

“Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance can download the Office 2013 applications as well as other Office products including SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013, Exchange 2013 and Project 2013 through the Volume Licensing Service Center. These products will be available on the Volume Licensing price list on December 1."

If you're an Office 365 Enterprise customer, the latest wave of "Office 15" features are starting to roll out, as well. The aforementioned spokesperson noted that Microsoft has started rolling out new capabilities to Office 365 Enterprise users via Microsoft's regular service updates. These updates will occur starting in late October and continue through general availability (early 2013, according to Microsoft).

One of my contacts recently told me that Microsoft is likely to "launch" and designate Office 2013 as being generally/commercially available in January 2013, rather than in February 2013, as had been expected by some of my sources. That January date makes sense given Office 2013 was released to manufacturing in October -- a month earlier than Microsoft had been telling some of its partners would be the RTM date.

Microsoft began rolling out the new Office client and server apps to MSDN and TechNet subscribers last week. Users running Windows RT, which includes a bundled preview version of Office 2013 Home & Student, can upgrade immediately to the final version of the suite via Windows Update.