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The New Office: A Champion in Business Productivity

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Bill Rodgers knew what it took to be a champion. "To be a consistent winner,” he once said, “means preparing not just one day, one month or even one year – but for a lifetime.” It’s that attitude that helped him achieve tremendous success as a marathon runner, culminating in his induction into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame.

With the new Office, Microsoft brings nearly a quarter century of experience developing solutions that help businesses achieve the highest level of productivity. It’s amazing to think how far Office has come since it was first introduced on Aug. 1, 1989. Today, more than 1 billion users rely on Microsoft Office for their productivity needs, and one person buys a copy of Office every second.

Among the reasons for this phenomenal growth: 25 years of championing business productivity. Microsoft continues to build upon its accumulated experience to prepare Office for a lifetime of success.

Introducing the New Office
The new Office is the most ambitious release of Office yet. It spans the full family of Office applications, servers, and cloud services. And it comes with a fresh, touch-friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social networking, reading, note-taking, meetings, and communication.

The new Office is full of new tools that transform productivity. Check out this slide show to learn about some of the new features you’re sure to love: 

The Distance Grows Wider
As with Bill Rodgers, whose firm commitment to running helped him fly past his competitors, with the new Office, the distance between Microsoft and Google grows even wider. First, Google is heavily focused on advertising, from which it derives 96 percent of its revenue. As a result, it’s been slow to respond to customer needs with Google Apps. As Rodgers said, “If the marathon is a part-time interest, you will only get part-time results.”

Second, compared to Office, which Microsoft has continued to hone and improve over the last 25 years, Google Apps is still incomplete and immature. Simply put, it lacks the comprehensive features required to address a wide range of user needs. To learn more about the differences between Microsoft Office and Google Apps, please see the Why Microsoft website.

The new Office has been getting stellar reviews. Writes Tony Bradley of PC World: “Office 365 is a solid service providing tremendous bang for the buck.”

Don Reisinger of eWeek agrees: “Office remains the most important office productivity suite in the enterprise,” he writes. By comparison, he says, Google Docs “still lacks the power that customers have come to expect from Office. Just try analyzing data in Excel to find out why Google Docs doesn’t hold up. For corporate users, Office is still the natural choice.”

The New Office: No Ordinary Upgrade
When it comes to business productivity, the new Office is truly a champion. It’s bold, it’s ambitious, and it’s innovative. As Eric Savitz of Forbes put it: “This is no ordinary upgrade.”

General availability of the new Office is planned for the first quarter of 2013. Please stay tuned for more specifics on general availability dates and other Office launch news. In the meantime, if you'd like to give the pre-release version a try, you can visit office.com/preview.

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