Business Applications and Services

In Nov. 2008 Microsoft announced availability of SharePoint Online Standard, a hosted version Windows SharePoint Services for small and medium businesses or departments, and Exchange Online Standard, a hosted version of Exchange. In July 2008, the company also delivered updates to Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Server, Project Server, and Project that fixed bugs, changed existing features, and also delivered new features.

Office Suite, Visio, and Groove

The Office suite and the Visio diagramming product received major releases in late 2006. These “2007” product versions do not require Windows Vista, but they do require Windows XP SP2 or later, and thus are not supported on Windows 2000. The products will probably be updated in an “Office 14” wave of releases in late 2009 or early 2010.

(For a timeline of recent and future versions, see the illustration “Office and Visio Overview“. For an overview of earlier Office versions, including service pack release history and life cycle support dates, see the chart “Past Office Versions“.)