NEW DELHI: Microsoft Corp on Thursday announced the India launch of its software Office 2010, which incorporates the popular Word, Excel and Powerpoint applications. (Watch)
While the products will be available to business users from today, the retail (consumer) editions would be launched on June 15 this year.
"The excitement in India for Office 2010 is very high. The beta version has seen over 1.3 million downloads and over 2,000 companies like TCS, Lowe Lintas, Virgin Mobile, Mindtree Consulting and Infosys are already moving to the latest version," Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesan told reporters here.
He, however, declined to comment on sales targets. The company will also make available its Office Mobile 2010 on Windows 6.5 phones on Nokia smart phones, starting with the business range (E-series).
While the professional version of the software would be available at Rs 20,000, the consumer and SMB versions would be available at Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, respectively.
"Existing corporates, under the service assurance programme, would be upgraded free of cost along with consumers who have bought previous Office versions before March 15. Others would have to buy a new license," he said.
"Microsoft Office 2010 is designed to help professionals on the move so that business is not hampered while the executive is travelling and the communication is seamless," Venkatesan said.
The new edition of Microsoft Office 2010 has introduced many new features as well. For example, users can now embed videos in PowerPoint presentations, have voice-to-text conversion for voice mails on Outlook or see trends for a select set of information (and not the entire document).
It also allows co-authoring of documents on different machines simultaneously, that is, different people can connect simultaneously view documents and make changes in real-time.
Microsoft will also offer Office Web Applications, which allows users to access their documents over the 'cloud' while they are on the move. While it would be free for volume licensing customers (mostly enterprises), others can subscribe also to the service.
With cloud computing, companies tap their data and applications over the Internet or Intranet instead of local servers, which reduces operating cost.
Globally, over 8.6 million people are already using Office 2010. Currently, there are about 500 million licensed users of Microsoft Office.
While the products will be available to business users from today, the retail (consumer) editions would be launched on June 15 this year.
"The excitement in India for Office 2010 is very high. The beta version has seen over 1.3 million downloads and over 2,000 companies like TCS, Lowe Lintas, Virgin Mobile, Mindtree Consulting and Infosys are already moving to the latest version," Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesan told reporters here.
He, however, declined to comment on sales targets. The company will also make available its Office Mobile 2010 on Windows 6.5 phones on Nokia smart phones, starting with the business range (E-series).
While the professional version of the software would be available at Rs 20,000, the consumer and SMB versions would be available at Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, respectively.
"Existing corporates, under the service assurance programme, would be upgraded free of cost along with consumers who have bought previous Office versions before March 15. Others would have to buy a new license," he said.
"Microsoft Office 2010 is designed to help professionals on the move so that business is not hampered while the executive is travelling and the communication is seamless," Venkatesan said.
The new edition of Microsoft Office 2010 has introduced many new features as well. For example, users can now embed videos in PowerPoint presentations, have voice-to-text conversion for voice mails on Outlook or see trends for a select set of information (and not the entire document).
It also allows co-authoring of documents on different machines simultaneously, that is, different people can connect simultaneously view documents and make changes in real-time.
Microsoft will also offer Office Web Applications, which allows users to access their documents over the 'cloud' while they are on the move. While it would be free for volume licensing customers (mostly enterprises), others can subscribe also to the service.
With cloud computing, companies tap their data and applications over the Internet or Intranet instead of local servers, which reduces operating cost.
Globally, over 8.6 million people are already using Office 2010. Currently, there are about 500 million licensed users of Microsoft Office.
