As expected, it was a busy week for the Microsoft product teams this week with "Wave 14" announcements. Exchange 2010 is leading the way with a public beta release out already, and a final release to market (aka RTM) in the second half of 2009. Now Microsoft has announced Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 with a technical preview expected in late 2009 and release in 2010 for both products.
There was a press release from Chris Capossela of Microsoft's Information Worker Product Management Group, which included some talk about Ray Ozzie's vision of the Wave 14 releases. It's worth a quick read, but here are the key announcements
- Using Office Web applications, customers will be able to create, edit and collaborate on Office documents through a browser. Office Web Applications is a set of lightweight version of Office applications that run from the web, like Google Docs. These include Word Web, Excel Web, PowerPoint Web, and OneNote Web. Office Web Applications will allow you to view, edit, and collaborate on Office docs in a web browser.
- SharePoint 2010 can be deployed and managed on-premise as a server, or hosted as a service
- For developers, Microsoft are working on Open APIs, deep support for industry standards and developer tool support with Visual Studio 2010. This will further enhance the Office Web experience and uptake.
As you can see, there's a name change for SharePoint. They've dropped the Office tag from Microsoft SharePoint 2010 to give clearer brand distinction. While there's no specific mention of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), the SharePoint Team are definitely working on a v4 release of the product. There's some more info about this on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog
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