Office 15 or Microsoft Office 2012 technical preview has been started.
Microsoft has finally spoken officially on the progress and development of Office 15, codename for the next version of Office application suite and according to them, next version of Office suite is the most ambitious iteration of Office, that whole Office division has ever worked on.
While the statement of next Office version being “most ambitious ever” seems more like a marketing jargon, there are good chances that the next Office version may bring some drastic changes into the Office UI, specially at the time when Microsoft is aggressively embracing Metro UI for all its applications and software programs.
PJ Hough, corporate vice president for Office program development recently wrote an official post announcing the beginning of limited Technical Preview for Office 15(or Microsoft Office 2012).
Under Technical Preview, the software program will be given out to limited set of people who will get their hands on the yet-to-release Office 15 and will offer their feedback to Office team throughout their use. This previewing process will not be shared in the public domain as users will have to abide by NDA(Non-disclosure agreement) that Microsoft applies to all its users of technical preview.
Hough said the updates to Office 15 will bring revisions to Office-related cloud based services, mobile & PC clients along with server clients as well. Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio will likely be updated and may get integrated altogether.
Limited Technical Preview will soon be followed up with Beta release of ‘Office 15’ when everyone will get to use next Office version in beta mode. Office 15 Beta could arrive by as early as summer of 2012.
Taking a cue from the product release schedules of Office 2010 and earlier Office versions, we can take a safe assumption that the next version of Office may come out for public release by the end of 2012, probably coinciding with the public launch of much awaited ‘Windows 8’.
For more details, see detailed coverage of Office 15 aka Office 2012
