Brian Jones, a Microsoft Program manager for XML in Office 12, is interviewed by the Office Zealot podcast.
July 2005 Archives
Paul Thurrott has a great article on Office 12. Rather than quoting parts of it, go read the entire article.
Chris Capossela laid out a timetable for Office 12 betas and release dates:
He also confirmed the timeline for the release of Office 12, with the first beta available to a small group of several thousand this fall, followed by a far larger second beta, which will be made available to a million or so users next spring. The final product will ship in the second half of 2006, he said.
From eWeek.
Snippets from an eWeek article.
The most likely scenarios for Office 12 include enterprise content life cycle; knowledge directory and insight; unified communications, which would bring instant messaging, telephony and other communications together; and integrating them all into business process automation, enterprise project automation, deployment and small business.
Sketching some of the broad trends that Office 12 will address, Capossela said there is a real need for users to cross corporate boundaries more easily, so Office 12 will address this by allowing self-hosted, shared sites outside the corporate intranet.
There are also huge pressures around having an “always-on and always-connected” scenario, which will be addressed in Office 12 by giving people access to the information they need to make core decisions. These innovations will come through things such as its upcoming Scorecard Manager product, known as Maestro.
“Search, a frustrating experience today, also will be taken to a new level in Office 12, as will the complex issues of compliance and meeting government regulations,” Capossela said. “This is the one where people will be most surprised at the amount of work we have done.”
“So, where are people looking for solutions? Messaging and collaboration, portals and enterprise content management, enterprise project management, Office as a smart client, and deployment. We are spending most of our marketing dollars on these five areas,” he said.
Also, take a look at an old Microsoft Watch article.