It has been a busy six months since the launch of Office 2010. But right now, we’re pushing aside the chocolate cake to list the reasons why we’re celebrating the half birthday of Office 2010.

First, customers are buying Office 2010 at a record pace. Office has seen double-digit growth in its first full quarter on the market, a 50 percent increase in business non-annuity sales, and a 5 percent increase in multi-year licenses in Q1. Needless to say, we’re delighted by the rate of adoption and interest from consumer and business customers. While the numbers are amazing, what pleases us even more are the many ways customers have become more efficient and productive as a result of implementing Office 2010.

Global Crossing recently said its sales teams have decreased the time it takes to create proposals for customers by 30 percent, thanks to co-authoring in Office 2010.

Companies including Pfizer and ResMed also use OneNote in their engineering departments for product development and process improvement, helping the companies speed time to market.

Kaiser Permanente now has the ability to save directly to a SharePoint site from Office, which was reason enough for the company to upgrade to Office 2010. Along the same lines, Cushman & Wakefield achieved an efficiency improvement of 66 percent through its synchronization of SharePoint Server 2010 and Excel 2010. Not bad!

Hotel giant Hilton Worldwide is also joining with world-class technology providers to maintain its position as the leader in hospitality technology. As part of this program, Hilton uses Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Exchange 2010 and Windows 7 to experience the benefits of our integrated productivity platform. Using Microsoft’s productivity and collaboration tools, Hilton Worldwide employees will benefit from better access to information; the ability to quickly and easily locate subject matter experts; and improved collaboration and information sharing amongst geographically dispersed work teams at its 3,600+ global locations.

Office 2010 sets a new standard to help people get things done. We’d like to raise a glass to toast our customers’ success! Now back to our chocolate birthday cake….

Customers still considering Office 2010 can visit microsoft.com/office to learn how business can benefit from Office 2010.

Today, Microsoft Office Web Apps, on Windows SkyDrive and Hotmail, just became available in 15 additional countries. These additions bring the total number of countries to 26 – making the Web Apps available to more than 1/3 of all earthlings.
 
1. Australia
2. Austria
3. Belgium
4. Canada
5. China (new)
6. Denmark (new)
7. Finland (new)
8. France
9. Germany
10. Hong Kong (new)
11. Ireland
12. Italy (new)
13. Japan (new)
14. Netherlands (new)
15. New Zealand (new)
16. Norway (new)
17. Portugal (new)
18. Russia
19. South Korea (new)
20. Spain (new)
21. Sweden (new)
22. Switzerland
23. Taiwan (new)
24. Turkey (new)
25. United Kingdom
26. United States
 
For more information, visit the Web Apps team blog, the Web Apps site or the Microsoft Office Blog.

Today, we’re celebrating the one year anniversary of Exchange 2010 and all the benefits customers are experiencing after migrating from their previous messaging systems. BGC Partners, for example, has reported reducing recovery time by 50 percent and saving more than one million dollars in IT costs with the help of Exchange 2010.

Try Exchange 2010 to see how you and your business can benefit and, for more information about Exchange and its one year anniversary, please visit the EHLO blog and UC blog.

To view the most updated Microsoft Office Division news, please visit the following URL:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_mod_news_bites_blog/