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Microsoft's 2010 Brand: Details on Office, SharePoint

Microsoft branded some of its best-selling products to come with the "2010" stamp, beginning with the debut of Exchange Server 2010 beta.

Microsoft on Wednesday branded some of its best-selling products to come with the "2010" stamp, beginning with the debut of Exchange Server 2010 beta.

Many of the forthcoming 2010 editions -- including Microsoft Office, Exchange and SharePoint 2010 -- are being positioned as unified communications (UC) solutions. In addition, Microsoft announced that other 2010 software products (Office Web applications, Project and Visio) will be coming.

These new products are expected to be available in "the first half of 2010," Microsoft announced, although Exchange Server 2010 will arrive a little sooner, during "the second half of 2009."

Microsoft released few details on the new 2010 products, except for Exchange Server. However, the company did say that a technical preview of Office 2010 will start in "the third quarter of 2009."

In addition, Office 2010 will be available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, according to an Ars Technica story, citing a Microsoft source. Microsoft has generally been moving away from 32-bit solutions, starting with Windows Server 2008. Even Exchange Server 2010 will only be available as a 64-bit product, Microsoft said.

Another Office tidbit associated with the new 2010 branding is that MOSS, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, will be losing its "O." The SharePoint team explained the change by saying that people just associate Office with Office, and not with SharePoint.

The loss of the MOSS acronym doesn't imply any denigration in functionality, however.

"No one should worry that SharePoint doesn't work great with Office 2010 since we removed Office from the name, just like people didn't worry whether SharePoint was a great portal product when we removed Portal from the 2007 name," the SharePoint team explained.

And don't call Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 by the "MSS" acronym either, because that belongs to Microsoft Search Server, the team added.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Office users on the Apple Mac platform now have an offer from Microsoft to try Office 2008 for free over 30 days' time. The trial version of Office 2008 will run alongside any other Mac-based Office versions that may be installed, so it's easy to test it.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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