Microsoft started working Office 15

Microsoft Office 2010 (also called Office 14) may not be ready to ship yet, but Redmond is already hard at work on Office 15. The tidbit comes to us from the Microsoft Access Team Blog, which starts off a post titled "Access 15 and SQL Server" with the following joyful message: "Hello everyone! As Office 2010 nears shipping, we are starting to plan Office 15. One area that we are considering improving is our SQL Server support. Based on what I've heard from the community, that would be most welcome. Note that we are very early in planning, and considering many possible areas of investment, I unfortunately can't commit to any actual improvements at this time." The post continues on with specific questions and asks for responses in the form of comments or an e-mail.

Office 2003 was released on November 17, 2003 while Office 2007 arrived on January 30, 2007. Given that Office 2010 is slated to arrive in June 2010, we can probably expect Office 15 to arrive in the second half of 2013 or the first half of 2014. We're leaning towards it being released earlier rather than later.

This is just guesswork at this point though, as even Microsoft isn't sure yet. For all we know, the company will have Office 15 ready in time for launch with Windows 8 in 2012, and launch the two together, as it did with Windows Vista and Office 2007.

In slightly related news, the Office team last week announced that the 1 millionth download of Office 2010 had been crossed. On the Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering blog, in a post titled "Office 2010 Beta Hits a Milestone!" the details were explained: "This means that more than 1 million people across the world are now experiencing and testing the next version of Office. You'll recall we launched the public beta just two weeks ago at the Professional Developer's Conference and in reaching the 1 millionth download milestone, Office 2010 has had more people download it in the first two weeks than any other version of Office including Office 2007! It's super gratifying to see so many people interested in experiencing the next version of Office and help us deliver the best product possible."

For those still interested in getting their hands on it, the best place to start for the whole 2010 wave of Microsoft products is Microsoft.com/2010. You can provide feedback for the Office 2010 beta over on the Microsoft TechNet Office 2010 Forums.