Microsoft Office 365 Premium was just recently made available to the consumers and Microsoft is already in the process of giving back more to those who have subscribed.
Microsoft’s Office president, Kurt DelBene who spoke recent at Microsoft’s TechNet event made It clear that there is more on the way in the form of additional apps. We’ve already seen the Bing app that integrates with Word and Excel to integrate search results into the document being worked on. DelBene didn’t really shed any light on the nature of these apps and whether they will be universally compatible with all applications in the Office Suite or will be program specific.
The second piece of very interesting fact he shared was that Microsoft may be positioning the Office Suite to take on the Windows 8 look, with its clean tiles and minimalist UI. The best of all, the entire Suite is going to move to a Touch based interface, and if OneNote is any indication, Microsoft just may be on to something here. “I think certainly the transition of the applications to the new environment, the WinRT environment, will allow us to rethink the applications and we have the benefit of the desktop applications still being present.” This transition allows Microsoft to be “forward thinking” and consider “the first sets of features” that will be available “as we move Word, Excel, PowerPoint, to the Windows RT environment,” claims DelBene. “What is the experience for that when I know I’ve got the full applications on the desktop as well?”
Of course, this focus on Office 365 subscribers does not mean the standalone versions of Office will be phased out. Microsoft will continue selling the desktop version of the Suite as well, just so they have their bases covered. Along with that, going fully touch-based would also help Microsoft rake in the tablet market as well. However, we wont be seeing the touch version of Office just yet, as it is currently only a “to consider” item in Microsoft’s kitty, but rest assured, if and when the guys at Redmond confirm this, we’d definitely let you know.