Microsoft unveils Office 2010 and takes productivity software online

Office 2010 reduces number of packages, adds new features and provides Office Web applications option

Office 2010 lets customers use online applications

Microsoft has announced that some of its Office applications will be delivered over the internet in the next version of its productivity suite, Office 2010, codenamed Office 14.

Office Web applications, as Microsoft has tagged the online version, will include Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word "with reduced functionality to that experienced by users who have Office installed on their PCs," according to Chris Adams, Microsoft's Office client product manager.

The cut-down online version of Office 2010 will be available to more than 400 million Windows Live account users, as an on-premises version to 90 million Office annuity (volume licensing) customers, and through Microsoft Online Services, which is available to customers who purchase a subscription as part of Microsoft's hosted Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) offering.

A technical engineering preview of Office 2010 will be made available next month – the first time that a large number of enterprise customers and partners will get access to a pre-release version of the software.

Office 2010 and the new Office Web applications will be formally released in the first half of 2010, said Adams.

Microsoft has also cut down the number of packages from eight to five:

For enterprise customers – Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 and Microsoft Office Standard 2010 will only be available via volume licensing, with both including usage rights for on-premises web applications.

For consumers – Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 will be licensed for non-commercial use, along with Microsoft Office Professional 2010 and Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 for smaller businesses.

New features in Office 2010 will include an image-processing tool and an enhanced cut-and-paste function for Word, a video-processing tool for PowerPoint, and tools to deal with email management in Outlook.

All Office 2010 applications will be delivered in 32- and 64-bit formats, and Office 2010 will be installable on Windows XP with service pack 3, Vista, and the yet-to-be-released Windows 7 operating system.