Business Applications and Services

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

The next versions (branded 2013) of the Office suite, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Lync Server, and related products were released to manufacturing in Oct. 2012 and were made available to volume licensing customers on Dec. 2012. The wave will also include a major update to the Microsoft-hosted Office 365 services, which began rolling out to customers beginning with an update to the Office Web Apps in Nov. 2012. (See the sidebar “Office 365“.)

The 2013 wave will also deliver several application versions that will be required for Microsoft product support on Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012. (See the illustration “Application Versions Supported on Recent Platforms“.)

Office Suite

The Office suite, Microsoft’s most widely used client application for business, enables document editing, data access and manipulation, e-mail, presentations, and collaboration. It ships in multiple editions that include combinations of the following applications:

Word (document creation)

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