Choosing an Office 2010 Suite

Organizations using volume licensing can choose between two Office 2010 suites for Windows PCs: Office Standard 2010 and Office Professional Plus 2010. Office Standard will suffice for many users, but Office Professional Plus can help organizations quickly develop applications and reports, control access to corporate information, and promote user adoption of SharePoint content management solutions. Many organizations will choose Office Professional Plus because it is the only product offered in a standard Enterprise Agreement contract.

Organizations can also license Mac Office Standard 2011 for their Mac users. (See the sidebar “Office for Mac“.)

Both Suites Bring Core and Web Apps but Not Servers

Organizations may buy Office 2010 Standard and Office 2010 Professional Plus only in volume licensing; neither is available in retail or OEM channels. (This is a change from earlier versions of Office, where some suites offered in volume licensing were available in other channels.) Both suites include the applications for the most commonly used Office functions. (See the illustration “Office Standard and Office Professional Plus“.) Both suites also offer important licensing rights and technical features for centrally managing Office on large numbers of PCs and which are not available in retail and OEM suites. Notably, both use volume license activation, a special version of Microsoft’s license activation antipiracy technology that makes it practical to deploy Office to large numbers of PCs.