Posted 11/18/09 at 07:54:36 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Microsoft today announced the (official) launch of the Office 2010 beta. The official launch has come a week after the beta was leaked onto torrent sites. Microsoft first announced the beta on its website and Kurt DelBene, Office unit senior vice president at Microsoft, later confirmed the launch at the ongoing Professional Developers Conference (PDC). The beta can be downloaded from the official Office 2010 website.

The beta of Office Mobile 2010 is also now available from the Windows Mobile Marketplace. However, it is only meant for Windows Mobile 6.5. The consumer version of Office Web Apps – the online version of Office - is yet to bid adieu to the technical preview stage, however, the enterprise version has safely reached beta.

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Posted 11/17/09 at 09:37:41 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC) began today, and right off the bat we have some solid information about an impending release. Windows Azure will be available to businesses on January 1, 2010. It will be free for the first month as well.

Windows Azure will be an operating system in the cloud. An applications layer will be hosted in a datacenter and developers will be able to write applications for it like they would for any other OS. The cloud service landscape has changed significantly since the Redmond giant started talking about the cloud-based web some four years ago.

The number of netbooks and smartphones has exploded since Microsoft began this endeavor. These platforms may benefit most from technologies like Azure. Can Microsoft make cloud-based services a part of their core business with Azure? Maybe we’ll get some clues during the rest of PDC.

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Posted 10/28/08 at 02:16:53 PM by Alex Castle

In another bit of cloud-computing-related news out of Microsoft’s PDC, the Redmond giant has announced that the next generation Office suite will include browser based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. The apps won’t be fully-featured, but they will be competitive with Google’s online office offerings, according to Microsoft.

The online Office apps will be called “Office Web Applications,” and will be available in ad-supported and subscription-based flavors over Office Live. It looks like the apps will work with IE, Firefox, and Safari. Support for Google’s browser has yet to be confirmed.

It’s shaping up to be a big couple of days for cloud computing. We can expect to hear a lot more from Microsoft during the rest of the PDC about what this technology’s going to look like in the future.

What are you the most excited about? Hit the jump and let us know.

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Posted 10/27/08 at 08:24:20 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Cloud computing is going to be the focal point at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), according to eWeek. The company will share its “services aspirations” and there is every possibility it might shed light on its so-called “Cloud OS”. But Windows 7 is expected to assume more importance than anything else at PDC.

Though cloud computing and Windows 7 are most certainly going to attract all the attention at PDC, the company is expected to shed more light on its Oslo modeling platform and Visual Studio 2010 as well.  "There will be lots of talk of interoperability and how developers not on the platform can work with Microsoft technology," said Tim O'Brien, senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft.

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