Whilst the Windows product group seems to have dumped year-based product naming in favour of monikers like XP (for eXPerience) and Vista (because of the views) it has been announced that the next version of Office, with it’s new “ribbon” interface, is to be called plain old Office 2007. Actually, that doesn’t bother me at all – as a corporate user, it tells me that it is most likely to be released late in 2006, and that because it doesn’t have a consumer-focused name it might actually include some new features for business.

As a Consultant, I’m also glad that Windows and Office no longer share a name (e.g. Windows 2000 and Office 2000, or Windows XP and Office XP) – it confused people. IT management generally thought that you needed Windows XP to run Office XP (Office 2002).

The official Microsoft press release announcing the Office 2007 branding and packaging brought me an exciting piece of news:

“Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, the new name for a significantly updated release of Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003, will deliver improved information management and teamwork solutions through integration with new Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 capabilities, as well as inclusion of Microsoft Office Communicator.”

So it looks like soon I’ll finally be getting hold of Microsoft Office Communicator on my corporate desktop (assuming my employer adopts Office 2007) – that should open a world of communications possibilities for me.