What’s new?
Well, the new Office means new Office 365 service, Office 2013 clients, SharePoint 2013, Exchange 2013, Lync 2013, Project 2013, and Visio 2013! That’s a boat load of new, awesome products in the basket of Microsoft offerings this season.
When do we get it?
At the end of this month, our enterprise customers will be able to start deploying the new Office, and consumers who purchase a Windows 8 RT device will get Office Home & Student 2013 RT. Early next year, we’ll provide more information about the general availability of the Office 365 services for consumers, businesses, universities, and governments.
Want to learn more?
Moments ago, the Office engineering team signed off on the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build. This milestone means the coding and testing phase of the project is complete and we are now focused on releasing the new Office via multiple distribution channels to our consumer and business customers.
This is the most ambitious release of Office we've ever done. It spans the full family of Office applications, servers and cloud services. The new Office has a fresh, touch friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social, reading, note-taking, meetings and communications. We are proud to achieve this milestone and are eager to deliver this exciting release to our customers.
General availability is planned for the first quarter of 2013. Starting October 19, customers purchasing Office 2010 from local retailers or resellers will receive the new Office for free upon availability. Customers will also see a preview version of the new Office on Windows RT devices, beginning with the Windows 8 launch on October 26.
http://blogs.office.com/b/office-news/archive/2012/10/11/office-reaches-rtm.aspx