Microsoft's Office 2010 Pro Plus: What's inside?
A month ago, Microsoft officials acknowledged the name and one feature of the company's forthcoming Office 2010 Pro Plus SKU. Thanks to a new slide from an alleged Microsoft presentation, now we know a bit more about what's likely to debut in that version.
Microsoft admitted in May -- after word leaked via Twitter that the company was renaming its Groove online/offline synchronization capability to "SharePoint Workspace Manager" -- that the newly minted SharePoint Workspace and OneNote would be part of the Office 2010 Pro Plus SKU. Company officials refused to say anything more about which other applications and features will be part of that SKU.
On June 18, on his UX Evangelist blog, Stephen Chapman has posted a slide, allegedly from Microsoft, that shows what other features are slated to be part of this new Office 2010 SKU. The feature set for the Pro Plus SKU looks like this:
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Outlook
- OneNote
- Publisher
- Access
- InfoPath (electronic forms client)
- Communicator (corporate instant-messaging client)
- SharePoint Workspace
Office 2010 Pro Plus will add tighter server integration, according to the slide. Not only will the desktop client include more direct ties to SharePoint Server, but it sounds like it also could add deeper links with Office Communications Server and Microsoft's IP Rights Management technology.
The slide also includes acknowledgement of yet another alleged Office 2010 SKU, which Microsoft has yet to announce officially: Office 2010 Enterprise. That SKU will include the identical line-up of features as to what's in the Office 2010 Pro Plus SKU, according to the slide. If it is anything like Windows 7 Enterprise, Office 2010 Enterprise will be available to volume licensees with Software Assurance only.
(Given Chapman's past track record unearthing Microsoft presentations, I'm pretty confident this slide is real. I've asked Microsoft whether officials willl acknowledge that this slide and the information on it is real. I'm not hopeful that they'll do so, but I'll update this post if and when I hear back. Update: Microsoft officials declined to comment on the slide and information on it, beyond the fact that OneNote and SharePoint Workspace will be part of an Office 2010 SKU known as Pro Plus.)
Microsoft is planning to roll out invitation-only Community Technology Previews (CTPs) of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in July. A leaked CTP build of the Office 2010 client suite leaked to the Web in mid-May, and was widely downloaded from torrents.
A public Office 2010 beta is slated for later this year. Microsoft is aiming to deliver the final Office 2010 in the first half of 2010, company officials have said. Microsoft still has yet to unveil the planned Office 2010 SKU line-up or pricing.