When Microsoft starts selling Office 2010 next year, the company will take its workhorse software suite and move it one step closer to its vision of cloud computing.
The company said the software will launch in June, without a specific date.
In a major shift, the launch will include Office Web Apps -- free Web versions of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software -- to compete with Google Docs. Microsoft has also said it will release a new version of Office Mobile for smartphones.
Those steps represent a branching out of the Office suite as computing moves increasingly beyond the personal computer and toward the so-called cloud, where work is done on the Web, with the data and applications stored in distant servers.
Test versions of Office 2010, also known as a beta release, are now available for anyone to download from Microsoft's Web site to try out.
Office is made by Microsoft Business division, which accounted for 32 percent of the company's sales in its 2009 fiscal year, or $18.9 billion. The Office 2010 release will also includes new versions of SharePoint Server, Visio and Project.
