Office 2007 Suite Packaging Announced

The Office suite’s next version will include a new high-end edition for volume license customers, while looser licensing on a low-priced consumer edition could draw more consumers into upgrades. The new packaging does not radically change costs for existing customers, and brings the less-established products OneNote and Groove Virtual Office into the Office suite, making those applications more accessible to new customers.

New Enterprise Suite for Volume Licensing

Formerly code-named Office 12, the Office 2007 suite is a significant upgrade. New features include a new user interface intended to help less-expert users exploit the product’s capabilities, a substantially improved version of the Excel spreadsheet application, and additional integration features for Microsoft’s SharePoint line of portal and content management products. Organizations that purchase Office 2007 through volume licensing will note the following changes to packaging:

Office Professional Plus replaces Office Professional Enterprise Edition. The successor to the Office 2003’s Professional Enterprise edition will be called Professional Plus. Like Professional Enterprise, Professional Plus will include all the major suite applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) as well as Access, InfoPath, and Publisher. However, Professional Plus will also include Communicator, which provides instant messaging and voice communication like the built-in Windows Messenger client of Windows XP, but offers improvements in the user interface, directory integration, and telephony features. Microsoft will price Office 2007 Professional Plus at roughly 5% more than Office 2003 Professional Enterprise, but customers who have covered the Office Professional Enterprise on an Enterprise Agreement (EA) or Software Assurance (SA) can upgrade to Professional Plus at no charge.