Microsoft takes sharper aim at business users with two new Mac Office releases
Microsoft is working on two new versions of its Mac Office suite that include more enterprise-focused features and capabilities.
Microsoft's Mac Business Unit will make available to business users a new version of Mac Office on September 15: One targeted at business users.
The new Business Edition of Mac Office 2008 will be available on September 15 for $399 (U.S. estimated street price; $239 for the upgrade). It will include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage plus new features that will improve the suite's ability to work with SharePoint, Exchange and Microsoft-hosted Online services.
Microsoft also is working on the next version of Office for Mac, which it will deliver in time for holiday 2010, said Eric Wilfrid, General Manager of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit. That new version will drop Entourage and add in its place a Mac-optimized version of Microsoft Outlook. The 2010 release of Office for Mac also will add back support for Visual Basic, Wilfrid said.
Outlook for Mac will be a Cocoa application Wilfrid emphasized during a call with press and analysts on August 13. It will be tightly integrated with the Mac OS X Time Machine and Spotlight search technologies. It won't look just like Microsoft's existing Outlook e-mail client but it will be interoperable with it. And it will add support for Microsoft's information rights-management technology, which allows business users to lock down confidential information.
Wilfrid told conference call participants he had "no ne news today" about the rumored port of Office for the iPhone. That was the announcement many had been expecting Microsoft's Mac Business Unit to make today.
Update: A few more details: Microsoft will begin taking preorders for the new Business SKU of Office for Mac 2008 on August 18. It is phasing out two of the existing versions of that product: The standard Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac SKU and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition. The plan is to offer only two Office 2008 for Mac SKUs: The new Business Edition and the existing Home and Student edition.