IT Forum 2005: Office 12 Technical Beta released

By Alun Williams, Barcelona

Posted on 17 Nov 2005 at 09:22

Slightly earlier than expected, the next generation of Microsoft's office Suite has gone into a technical beta release, available only to nominated Microsoft customers and partners. Codenamed Office 12, the new functionality of the productivity suite was highlighted in the keynote of Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's Business Division.

As we reported on Tuesday, Microsoft had scheduled a closely controlled release, with a broad public beta planned for the spring of 2006 (you can register to be notified of its availability at www.microsoft.com/office/preview).

'Office '12' will redefine the Office experience,' said Microsoft's corporate VP of the Information Worker Product Management Group, Chris Capossela. 'The next version of Office is the most significant release in more than 10 years and includes new technologies designed to allow information workers to drive greater business success. Now, after many years of research and development, we're eager to put the software to the test and solicit technical feedback from select customers and partners.'