Office 2010 Beta Released To Developer Community

Microsoft on Monday released the beta version of Office 2010to its MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

As for the general public, they just have to wait.

“Office 2010 has not yet officially released for the public and we have no further information to share at this time,” a Microsoft spokesperson stated via e-mail. Presumably, SharePoint 2010 is also unavailable to the public.

Microsoft has typically said that its Office 2010  products will be available to the general public in the first half of next year.

Office 2010 will include Office Web Apps — browser-based versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Organizations will be able to host those applications on their own servers or pay for access through Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) offerings. The consumer versions will be ad-supported, at no additional cost.

IT organizations considering whether to upgrade to Office 2010 should poll users, according to a study released last week by Forrester Research, “Best Practices: Microsoft Office Enterprise Strategy.” About 80 percent of companies surveyed earlier this year by Forrester use Office, but there are alternatives, including Google Apps, Zoho’s hosted apps and OpenOffice.org, among others.