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When and how will users get the next version of Microsoft's Office?
Summary: Office 365 prepaid cards for sale at Walmart? That could be just one of the new distribution strategies Microsoft has up its sleeve for its next wave of Office 15 products.
By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft | July 13, 2012 -- Updated 12:46 GMT (05:46 PDT)
As interesting as what's in the next version of Microsoft's Office are Microsoft's distribution plans for getting its coming productivity software and services in the hands of more potential users.
Reports are circulating that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take the public wraps off Microsoft's next version of its Office suite and services, known collectively as the Office 15 wave, on July 16. While select testers have had their hands on private builds of these products for several months, there's been little concrete information on when and how Microsoft plans to make final versions available of Office 2013 (the expected final name of the Office 15 client); the complementary Exchange, SharePoint and Lync servers; and Office 365, the Microsoft-hosted cloud version of these servers.
At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto this past week, many partners were expecting news about the next milestone for Office 15 -- the one and only promised public beta. But there was no mention during the keynotes or public sessions about the timing for the beta (at least as far as I heard).
There was, however, a first-time public mention of something called the Office 365 Fully Packaged Product (FPP), during a keynote address for small/mid-size business partners at the show. (Thanks to Guy Gregory of The Final Step for the heads-up.) Another Microsoft partner corroborated this FPP mention.
See for more details:
http://www.zdnet.com...ice-7000000871/
Summary: Office 365 prepaid cards for sale at Walmart? That could be just one of the new distribution strategies Microsoft has up its sleeve for its next wave of Office 15 products.
By Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft | July 13, 2012 -- Updated 12:46 GMT (05:46 PDT)
As interesting as what's in the next version of Microsoft's Office are Microsoft's distribution plans for getting its coming productivity software and services in the hands of more potential users.
Reports are circulating that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take the public wraps off Microsoft's next version of its Office suite and services, known collectively as the Office 15 wave, on July 16. While select testers have had their hands on private builds of these products for several months, there's been little concrete information on when and how Microsoft plans to make final versions available of Office 2013 (the expected final name of the Office 15 client); the complementary Exchange, SharePoint and Lync servers; and Office 365, the Microsoft-hosted cloud version of these servers.
At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto this past week, many partners were expecting news about the next milestone for Office 15 -- the one and only promised public beta. But there was no mention during the keynotes or public sessions about the timing for the beta (at least as far as I heard).
There was, however, a first-time public mention of something called the Office 365 Fully Packaged Product (FPP), during a keynote address for small/mid-size business partners at the show. (Thanks to Guy Gregory of The Final Step for the heads-up.) Another Microsoft partner corroborated this FPP mention.
See for more details:
http://www.zdnet.com...ice-7000000871/
