Office 11 Beta Lands in Testers' Hands
eWeek | at | by Mike
Microsoft Corp. has sent the first beta of Office 11, its next-version desktop productivity suite, to a core group of several thousand technical testers for evaluation, bug checking and comment. The Redmond, Wash., software company, which will announce the release of the beta on Tuesday, has high expectations for this Office upgrade, which it is targeting at the broad business user market rather than just at productivity workers as it has in the past.
It is also hoping that this wider target group and the business value the new features bring will drive sales of the software, which have begun to plateau over the past few quarters. In fact Jeff Raikes, Microsoft's group vice president of productivity and business services, has previously said he hopes to double revenue from Office to $20 billion by 2010.