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

Several important business applications received updates in June 2010, when Microsoft released new versions of the Office suite, SharePoint Server, Visio, and the Project line. Exchange got a major update in Nov. 2009, and the company launched online services based on these versions with the release of Office 365 in June 2011. (See the sidebar “Office 365 and BPOS“.) All of these applications will probably receive major updates by the end of 2013.

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)
Excel (spreadsheet)
PowerPoint (presentation)
Outlook (e-mail, calendar, and contacts)
OneNote (note-taking and collaboration)
Access (database management)
InfoPath (forms design and forms-based entry of XML data)

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