Microsoft has claimed its decision to delay the release of Office 2007 to coincide with the launch of the consumer version of its Windows Vista operating system in January next year will have little impact on small business customers.
The vendor had started to tout some of the features available in the small business edition of Office 2007 in recent months as it sought to whet appetites for the product’s launch in October or November this year.
Microsoft still hopes to have Office 2007 and Vista available to volume licensing customers before the end of the year, although it is a moot point whether many would be likely to replace their existing versions of Office and Windows XP overnight.
Clive Ryan, Microsoft business group manager, said small businesses were unlikely to be affected by the delays because they would have to go through an evaluation period of the products and “the final decision making wouldn’t happen straightaway”.
If a small company was considering buying a new laptop or desktop in the fourth quarter, “it might be worth postponing the decision by a month or two” to get Vista pre-installed, he suggested.
Ryan stressed the decision to delay Office 2007 was based on feedback from Microsoft’s partners, who preferred to launch Office 2007 and Vista together rather than separately. There was no technical requirement to have the two together.
“From a technical perspective, there’s no need to have Vista to run Office 2007,” Ryan said. “The worldwide beta programme for Office 2007 is being run purely on Windows XP.”
Microsoft announced the delays in the middle of last month.
Among the big changes to Office in Office 2007 are a “radically different user interface”, XML-based file formats and a revised business contact manager application.
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