In July, Microsoft released a free preview version of Office 2013 to the general public. While the final version of the popular productivity software suite won"t go on sale for most of the world until sometime in early 2013, Microsoft has just announced that Office 2013 can now be purchased by qualified business users.
The official Office blog states that business owners can purchase Office 2013, along with related programs such as Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013, SharePoint Server 2013, Project 2013 and Visio 2013, right now via Microsoft Volume Licensing. The blog adds:
To order, begin testing or learn more about Office 2013, please ask your Microsoft Account Team or your Microsoft Partner. Whether you"re ready to buy the on-premises Office 2013 products available now or want to use the cloud services available early next year, try the new Office today and let us know what you think.
Office 2013 reached its RTM (Release to Manufacturing) build stage in October. Owners of Windows RT devices, including Microsoft"s Surface tablet, already have the final version of Office RT 2013 available on their hard drives after an Internet software update. It has "personal use" versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote but they are not technically supposed to be used by businesses.
Source: Office blog | Image via Microsoft