Microsoft Launch Office Next Blog

While getting ready for the release of the next major flavor of Office, Microsoft is also making sure that it keeps the hype around the product at a high level.

Thus, the company has announced the launch of Office Next blog, through which info on the upcoming suite will be delivered to users. For the time being, no specific info on the product has been provided, but the first post on the blog, coming from PJ Hough, Corporate Vice President of Program Management, Microsoft Office Division, promises such details for the not too distant future. “I'm really excited to kick off this conversation and connect you with the engineers who are building future releases of Office—here, they'll discuss the improvements we make, the designs we choose and the data and feedback that inform our decisions,” PJ Hough notes. According to the latest reports on the web, the next flavor of Microsoft’s productivity suite is expected to be officially unveiled this Monday. The Redmond-based software giant should back the announcement with the availability of a public beta of the application.

At the moment, the next Office, set to land on shelves as Office 2013, is available for a limited number of people as a technical preview. However, Microsoft did promise the public availability of a beta release for the summer, although it did not offer specific info on when it would be made available. “As we work to bring these new products to you, we do extensive testing within Microsoft and with customers. This testing helps us find and fix problems, and feedback from customers helps us fine tune our products to their work styles,” the aforementioned blog post reads. “When they use early versions of our products and services on their turf, we learn a ton about how to evolve them to best support the ways people work. This input helps us continue to deliver the best Office experience.”

Office 2013 is expected to become commercially available sometime early next year. The suite was also announced to arrive loaded on Windows 8 devices, including those running Windows RT (ARM architecture).

Microsoft Office 2013 logo
Image credits to LiveSide

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