J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Office 14

The rumor mill is starting up: Microsoft to Alpha Test Office 14 Before End of Year.

Microsoft will begin alpha testing the next version of Office in November or December, according to a blog posting by a Microsoft employee.

According to a blog posting by Hayley Rixon, who works on the Microsoft business intelligence team, Microsoft is calling for people to be part of a technology adoption program (TAP) that will give them an early opportunity to test the monitoring and analytics components of Office PerformancePoint Server.

The TAP for this product will be a part of the TAP for Office 14, the alpha test of which will begin in the "November/December timeframe this year," according to the blog posting. Office PerformancePoint Server is business performance analysis software that will be a part of the Office 14 release.

Rixon's blog post has been deleted.