Opening a New Microsoft Office 2013

If there is a more important set of applications to the channel than Microsoft Office, it's hard to imagine. Microsoft this week began previewing Microsoft Office 2013 that among other things includes tighter integration with cloud services such as Skype, Yammer and SkyDrive. Designed to run on Windows 7 and the forthcoming Windows 8 platforms, a new edition of touch-enabled Microsoft Office will be a critical component of Microsoft's bid to become relevant in the tablet computing wars. While it's not clear when Microsoft Office will ship or how much it will cost, there are a number of new features that solution providers might want to start getting customers excited about "tapping" into as soon as possible in order to start driving Windows upgrades starting late this year.