Office 2008 for Mac Sneak Peek Kick-Off

At the beginning of August I told you that we'd start communicating more about Office 2008 in September. Well, it's September, and I am back here on Mac Mojo to kick-off the next wave of information on Office 2008.

We know that there are many Mac Mojo readers out there that need to start planning Office 2008 deployment in their organizations. As we start to share information, we’ll focus on some information that will help you start thinking about your enterprise deployment alongside some deeper dives into some of the new features in Office 2008.

We have invested in Exchange support in Entourage for the past four years, and continue to do so in Office 2008. I think Entourage 2008 users in Exchange environments will find this the most reliable version to date - I have been living in daily builds of Entourage for over two months now, and I am delighted with the stability and reliability of our Exchange support and how well the calendar interoperates with my assistant, who uses Outlook.  

We’ve worked closely with enterprise customers to prioritize features and improvements in Entourage 2008. As well, we have established an unprecedented level of collaboration between the Entourage team and the Exchange team, and we will continue to invest in strengthening that relationship to ensure that future versions of Entourage work great with Exchange. We are committed to delivering a world class Exchange client that delivers on enterprise customer needs in Office 2008 and beyond.

But our enterprise investment doesn't end with Exchange support - you've seen us expand into Messenger for Mac support for Live Communications Server (now Office Communications Server). And while our development team is working fast and furiously on Office 2008, we've got product planners looking to the future and working closely with other teams at Microsoft to identify areas where we can connect Office for Mac into other enterprise level technologies. There isn't anything I can share on this today, but it's important for you to know that we are thinking just as hard about delivering on core enterprise needs as we are more end-user focused features.

Later today, you’ll see a post telling you all about what's new with OOF in Entourage 2008. And in the coming weeks and months, we'll share details on things like:

  • Changes in the Entourage calendar
  • Office 2008 installation and deployment options
  • Entourage database improvements
  • How Mac users can work with SharePoint
  • Some of our security features in Office for Mac

For those of you looking forward to hearing and seeing more about Office 2008 feature updates and suite improvements - visit us here at Mac Mojo on September 18th for the first of our bi-weekly updates leading up to our RTM in mid-December.

I hope you will enjoy Office 2008 as much as we do - the whole BU is using Office 2008, with builds that get better every day. It’s been a monumental project for the team - I’m proud of the work they’ve done in Office 2008 and we can’t wait to get it into your hands in January.