The next major iteration of the Office productivity suite will be finalized and available for purchase by the end of 2012, Microsoft confirmed. It appears that the Redmond company is working to have Office 15, the codename under which Office 2010’s successor is being developed, hit commercial availability no later than December 2012.Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft's Business division confirmed this information to Seattle Times. "We're typically in a 2 1/2 year cycle," DelBene was quoted saying.
According to the report, Microsoft's Business division boss was talking about the general availability deadline of Office 15, and not about the milestone synonymous with the product’s finalization.
With GA set for December 2012, or earlier, this means that Office 15 will be wrapped up much sooner next year.
The release to manufacturing (RTM) date for Office 15 was not disclosed, but as tradition goes, it should be a few months ahead of the product hitting store shelves.
Office 15 is currently under development, but has yet to even reach the Beta stage. Leaked bits of pre-Beta testing releases have made their way into the wild, but despite some improvements, it’s still very hard to get a full sense of the evolution from Office 2010 to Office 15.The software giant has also yet to confirm the official moniker for the next major version of Office. Since it will be released by the end of the coming year, the company is most likely to brand Office 15 as Office 2012, although Office 2013 could also be a valid option.
DelBene explained that it took three years to deliver Office 2010 counting from the office 2007 release because of in excess of 60,000 pages of antitrust documentation that Microsoft had to submit to the European Commission.
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