On January 30th, 2012, Microsoft <a href="http://blogs.office.com/b/office-exec/archive/2012/01/30/quot-office-15-quot-begins-technical-preview.aspx" target="_blank">announced</a> that it had completed a major development milestone on the next version of the Office Suite. Unfortunately, the Technical Preview Beta is already full, but there will be a public beta program that will be announced this summer.

<strong>Why should you care about Office 15?</strong> Well, if you are a decision maker or are in charge of a SharePoint, Lync, Exchange, Project or Office deployment...you will want to start preparing now. If this release follows the pattern of previous versions, upgrades from 2 versions previous will be painful. This means Office 2007, SharePoint 2007, Exchange 2007, and Project 2007 or earlier deployments will mean extra work and will likely push back your ability to upgrade even more.

<strong>What's special about this release?</strong> Office 15 will mark the first time that Microsoft will simultaneously update their cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio. That is a HUGE release and will likely be a very big event for Microsoft.

<strong>Start preparing now!</strong> Contact your eGroup sales agent to ask how you can better prepare your environment and users for the next wave of technology!