Office 2010 released to manufacturing

Posted on 19 Apr 2010 at 14:18

Microsoft has reached the last major milestone in the run up to Office 2010's release and has been released it to manufacturing.

RTM occurs when Microsoft is happy with the state of the software and signs off the code. Office 2010 will now be burnt to discs and uploaded to Microsoft's servers ahead of the staggered release, which starts on 27th April.

It also signals the point at which PC manufacturers can start to install Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 onto new PCs.

"RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone," said Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft corporate vice president, in a statement.

"Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we've had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version - that's more than three times the number of 2007 beta downloads," he added.

Volume licence customers on Microsoft's Software Assurance program will start to receive Office 2010 on 27th April, while volume licence customers not on Software Assurance will have to wait until 1st May. Business customers will be able to get Office 2010 on 12th May and it'll be available at retail in June.

Office 2010 is the first version of Microsoft's de-facto productivity suite to offer web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Businesses will have to host these apps on a SharePoint server, while general consumers will be able to access them through Windows Live.

Author: Tim Smalley

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