Microsoft reveals Office 15

Yup - you heard it correctly..Office 15.
Years ago I still recall Office 95 with the bland gray borders, the basic Excel formulas, the introduction of "Clippy" in Word. Now Microsoft is taking the Office suite to bold territory...The Cloud

It's the most complete overhaul of the Office products revealing a new web-like look, the ability to start video chats from your email program, add YouTube videos to essays, and share any documents online with Facebook friends.

We live in the cloud era, and Microsoft says that the new Office has been designed accordingly. "We're transitioning Office as a cloud service" said CEO Steve Ballmer, introducing Monday's launch.

"Rather than store documents on your computer, Microsoft's newest edition of Word will store letters, essays and more in the cloud," corporate vice-president Kirk Koenigsbauer said.

Microsoft stated in it's Office Blog that it will make it easy to sign in to upload your documents so you can use the same Microsoft account that you're already using with other Microsoft services, including SkyDrive, Hotmail, XBox, Office.com and soon, Windows 8.  If your business or school is a customer of Office365, you can also use that account to connect to your work world while away from your desk.

This brings to mind of the battlefield between Microsoft and Google. Google as you know already has Google Docs where you can upload documents, presentations, spreadsheets and share & collaborate these with coworkers.

Office 15 users will also let users share documents to Facebook or as a blog post from a pop-up menu, and other programs including Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel will feature low-profile menus that only expand when selected, making the programs look more like web pages.

The verdict is still out though. Even as Ballmer claims that Office 15 "is the biggest and most ambitious release in our history", the true test is how well the Office platform ties in with Microsoft's cloud servers.

It's a brand new redesigned look from the ground up and configured with the Metro Windows 8 touch interface in mind. It will take time though as using any office products from a tablet is still awkward for me, but using the platform on a PC, I'd say Microsoft has a powerful suite.