Microsoft completes Office 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 has been "released to manufacturing", the last major milestone before release.

RTM occurs when Microsoft officially signs off the code, and the company will now allow Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 to be installed on new machines by PC makers, burnt to CDs and uploaded to Microsoft’s servers ready for download.

"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 Microsoft’s corporate vice president Takeshi Numoto in a blog.

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"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.

The software giant plans to release Office 2010 in stages, beginning with volume licence customers – representing 250 or more PCs – with Software Assurance who will be able to download the suite on 27 April.

Volume customers without Software Assurance will be able to get the products on 1 May, followed by business customers on 12 May. Office 2010 will be offered at retail in June.

Perhaps the most significant new feature of Office 2010 is Web Apps, separate browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Businesses looking to make use of Web Apps will need to host the software on a SharePoint server, while consumers will be able to access the suite through Windows Live.