Microsoft's next Office: How, when will it arrive?

(Credit: Microsoft)

As interesting as what's in the next version of Microsoft Office are the company's distribution plans for getting its coming productivity software and services in the hands of more potential users.

Reports are circulating that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take the public wraps off Microsoft's next version of its Office suite and services, known collectively as the Office 15 wave, on July 16. While select testers have had their hands on private builds of these products for several months, there's been little concrete information on when and how Microsoft plans to make final versions available of Office 2013 (the expected final name of the Office 15 client); the complementary Exchange, SharePoint and Lync servers; and Office 365, the Microsoft-hosted cloud version of these servers.

At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto this past week, many partners were expecting news about the next milestone for Office 15 -- the one and only promised public beta. But there was no mention during the keynotes or public sessions about the timing for the beta (at least as far as I heard).

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