Microsoft is currently unveiling Office 2010, the latest version of its world-leading office productivity software. Indeed, customers with Volume Licensing Agreements were first to take a look, with a launch on May 12th. Many small and medium-sized businesses are still using old versions of Office - the 2003 edition or even earlier - and Office 2010 certainly has plenty of new features to surprise and amaze users.

However, new functions and features are only half the story. Ofcom research reports that more than five times as many businesses enjoy broadband-speed internet today than back in 2003. Today, we live and work in a connected world, and effective business demands not just impeccable personal productivity on individual desktop machines but also flexible working and collaboration.

Office 2010 is therefore equipped with the sort of collaboration and workflow features previously only available to larger companies (and at an enterprise budget!), allowing everyone to extend their desktop to any computer, anywhere. Office 2010 puts the office wherever you want it to be.

Introducing Office Web Applications

Office Web Applications (OWA), for example, gives you a powerfully-featured Office interface in nothing more than a web browser; allowing you to edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents and artefacts without any installed software.

The applications of this freedom are immense: for example the ability to edit a document from an internet café, or being able to polish off a proposal whilst still on-site with a client. Crucially, unlike Office’s online competitors:

  • Office Web Apps guarantees full fidelity with Office on the desktop. You can open a document in the office, view it on the train on your Smartphone, make changes in a client’s office with OWA and then finalise it back in the office; all safe in the knowledge that you won’t lose a single piece of formatting. In the words of Robert Epstein, Head of SMB Sales and Marketing MS UK, “Every document remains exactly as the author intended”.
  • Office Web Apps gives you a complete Office experience. Just because you’re editing online doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice usability. Functions are still found in the same place on the screen; and the multi-functional Ribbon still works exactly as it does on your desktop version. There’s no new training required - OWA is just like being back at your desk.
  • Office Web Apps is platform-independent. It doesn’t matter what device or browser you end up using; OWA guarantees you a consistent document editing experience. Says Epstein, “Office 2010 is designed to give you the best possible experience of Office across the PC, the browser and the phone. All of these are relevant use cases for today’s businesses and we’ve made sure that whatever platform or device you use to open Office documents, you’ll always get the right rich and functional experience allowing you to edit with confidence. In the office, at home or on the road, the technology in Office 2010 means you can get work done on your terms.”
  • Office Web Apps gives you all the workflow features of Office 2010, including simultaneous editing of documents with colleagues. Imagine a sales director in the client’s office being able to work on a quote at the same time as the Financial Director back at base; with no complicated “checking in and checking out” procedures. Office 2010 makes this a reality.

How do I get Office Web Applications?

Not surprisingly, Office Web Applications integration is part of the Office 2010 suite. If you buy Office 2010 for desktop machines, either singly or through a Volume Licensing Agreement, your documents will be ready for OWA usage. Furthermore, any existing licensees with a Software Assurance contract are already entitled to an immediate upgrade to Office 2010 featuring OWA too.

On the delivery side, for midsized businesses, connectivity across the web is handled by Microsoft’s ubiquitous collaboration services suite; SharePoint. The good news is, SharePoint is available in a number of highly economical ways:

  • SharePoint is included with Windows Server. If you already have a standard on-site Windows Server installation, perhaps for file storage or email; chances are you already have SharePoint too.
  • SharePoint Online is included as part of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). BPOS is available for as few as five users, and gives your company SharePoint Online plus enterprise-grade email (Exchange), instant messaging, voice and video (OCS) and web conferencing (LiveMeeting) - all for a simple flat-rate monthly fee and no IT overhead. Think of BPOS as the best of Microsoft’s corporate productivity services packaged up and delivered virtually.
  • Similarly, SharePoint Online is available on its own as a hosted solution from several reliable and security-conscious Partners. Again, this means it’s available on a subscription basis; and, adds Epstein, that means “no capital investment; plus the flexibility to scale up and scale down the number of seats as your business needs change”.

Upgrades make sense for IT managers and CFOs alike

OWA and the many other features of Office 2010 offer midsized companies the opportunity to make great productivity gains; but in financially challenging times every company is looking for economies, and that goes for the IT department, too. Office 2010 has therefore been designed to minimise deployment costs.

Not only is Office 2010 easy to deploy, but it dovetails seamlessly with the Windows 7 Operating System, thanks to a Deployment Toolkit which gives IT teams reliable commissioning with minimal intervention.

As Windows XP comes to the end of its lifecycle, many midsize companies are looking to install Windows 7 and Office 2010 across their entire estates; delivering a quantum leap in productivity and staff performance, with a minimal need for investment in hardware.

Services like Office Web Applications mean that whatever your procurement regime, or your choice of licensing options, you can be certain that every instance of Office 2010 on the desktop is yielding maximum value for users than any previous version. For any CFO trying to square cost-consciousness with demands for greater business agility, that makes Office 2010 an obvious choice.