Executive Summary

Contributing Analysts: Chris Alliegro, Paul DeGroot, Greg DeMichillie, Peter Pawlak, and Matt Rosoff

The Office suite is the essential business tool for creating and editing documents and e-mail. The Office 2007 suite, released to businesses late in Nov. 2006, offers mainstream users better-looking documents with less work and makes major improvements to Excel for charting and large-scale calculation. However, Office 2007 also delivers the biggest changes to the product’s user interface and technology since Office 2000. Thus, organizations will have to evaluate and test Office 2007 more carefully than they have tested previous Office versions, and many will want to roll out the product simultaneously with Windows Vista and new desktop hardware.

This report provides CIOs and solution architects with a comprehensive introduction to evaluating the Office 2007 suite and planning its deployment. The report summarizes major changes in the user interface, file format, code compatibility, and deployment technology. It also summarizes the most important changes to the suite’s individual applications and presents an overview of the suite’s pricing and licensing.