Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Although Microsoft has not publicly revealed its plans for Office 2013 — which has been codenamed “Office 15” — other than to say that a public beta would be rolled out “later this summer,” there are clues that the company will unveil a sneak peek today.
The opening keynote of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC), which begins at 9 a.m. ET in Toronto, will feature company CEO Steve Ballmer and Kurt DelBene, the president of the Office division, according to the event’s website.
More telling, Microsoft used the same conference three years ago to announce Office 2010.
Microsoft introduced Office 2010 on July 13, 2009, the opening day of that year’s WPC, then followed up with invitations for a pre-beta build, dubbed “Technical Preview,” to select testers.
DelBene was the executive who later announced the first Office 2010 public beta at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference on November 18, 2009.
Office 2013’s timeline will be different, as Microsoft seeded developers and testers with a technical preview of the new suite in January.
Most analysts and pundits expect Office 2013 to go on sale early next year, several months after the launch of Windows 8 and its offspring, the tablet-oriented Windows RT.
Microsoft has not yet provided any information about Office 2013’s price, on-sale date, or the number of editions that will be sold or their contents. It’s unlikely all those details will be divulged today if Microsoft does issue a public preview: The company typically waits until much nearer to the release of a finished product before announcing prices, for example.