Pricing, Licensing, and System Requirements

Office 2007 pricing and packaging do not radically change costs for existing customers and bring the less-established OneNote and Groove Virtual Office products into the Office suite, making those applications more accessible to new customers. Similarly, system requirements have not changed, but some features require server upgrades and Windows 2000 is no longer supported.

New Enterprise Suite for Volume Licensing

The main changes to the Office suite for volume customers include a new name for one suite and the addition of a new high-end suite. (For a summary of the packages, see the chart “Office 2007 Packages, Channels, and Prices“.)

Office 2007 Professional Plus is the successor to Office 2003’s Professional Enterprise Edition. Like Professional Enterprise, Professional Plus will include the four core suite applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) as well as Access, InfoPath, and Publisher. Professional Plus adds Communicator, which provides instant messaging and voice communication when used in conjunction with Microsoft’s Communications Server (formerly Live Communications Server).