(Follow me on Twitter: msftkitchen)

For the final part in my “Office 14 Revealed” mini-series, I’ve decided to pull some quotes straight from a document in regards to Office 14 improving desktop TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). We’ve already seen that Office 14 will implement Volume Activation 2.0, greatly improve security without hendering productivity, and span the Fluent UI across all Office client applications in addition to SharePoint portals. If nothing else, everything to follow can be considered somewhat of a mission statement of Office 14′s.

“Office 14 is unique in its ability to simultaneously deliver a reduction in desktop TCO, dramatically extended reach for end user productivity, improved security and the power of rich, web and mobile applications from a single IT management platform.”

“Office 14 is a critical layer for organizational security, ensuring users know how to make informed decisions about the documents, emails and other information they receive.”

“On average, enterprises today manage more than 30 individual desktop applications. Many of these applications are interfaces to a business process or to information stored within a business system. Because users are forced to learn a large number of tools, and because IT organizations are challenged to managed user identities across these desktop tools and systems, they fall into a “results gap” where individuals are unable to sort through the various tools they require to accomplish their work. Office 14 provides a better way to solve this challenge.”

“Office 14 is the next wave in business productivity platforms designed to deliver business data and to drive business processes directly from the Office desktop. The new LOBi (Line of Business Infrastructure) stores and manages data connections between Office client applications, SharePoint Server and line-of-business systems to have a single path to and from business applications, streamlining access management, funneling the appropriate information to the right people, and unburdening end users by surfacing that information in tools they already know how to use.”

“Office 14 can be delivered to end users in the traditional manner, as a virtual application, through browser-based applications or even over a mobile phone, all through a single deployment infrastructure. Through integration with Microsoft System Center, and SharePoint Server, provisioning Office across a range of user experiences is easier than ever.”

“Extending the reach of productivity and collaboration with Office does not come at the expense of information security – in fact, managing the many avenues a user has to information is easier than before. In the past, IT organizations were essentially forced to balance the reach of information against its security and access. With Office 14, IT organizations are no longer forced to manage these areas as conflicting opposites. Because the collaboration contexts for Microsoft Office, which include Groove, Outlook, Office Live Workspaces, SharePoint sites and libraries, IT organizations can extend powerful collaboration tools to users in a managed context. Instead of leaving security and access management “in the cloud,” IT organizations can use the collaboration platforms of the Microsoft Office system with confidence.”

“With the Office system, access to information access is managed through a single identity management system. Whether you are sending an email message in Outlook Mobile, completing an InfoPath form, sharing information in a Groove workspace, or uploading documents to a SharePoint site, a users’ identity (and their rights to information and services) are persistent – and consistent – across the collaboration landscape. Even when an organization chooses to deploy Office 14 using Microsoft Application Virtualization, their profile data and user settings travel with them. Managing information Access with Microsoft Office has strong integration points that facilitate interoperability across many systems. In conjunction with SharePoint Server 14, support for new Claims-based authentication allows identity management systems to ensure single-sign-on identity and information access can be managed across-platforms. Advanced IT organizations benefit from powerful customization capability as well. The use of Group Policy Objects (GPO) tailor Office 14 down to the feature level, with fine-grained control over allowable save locations, file formats, application features, macro and add-in execution, and many other areas. Using the Office Security Guide and System Center Configuration manager, applications are targeted to a users’ geography, role or other criteria.”

And with that, I bring this mini-series to a close. Through everything I’ve run across, I’ve learned that Office 14 is a platform keeping security, productivity, and seamless multi-device use in mind. While we’ll certainly see some UI changes, they won’t be drastic. This version of Office is said to be a minor one but sounds like they’re really digging deep under the hood to provide a lot of added value for enterprise customers. If all you do is a bit of document editing and viewing, Office 14 probably won’t add much to your work process or productivity.

Thanks for tuning in and I hope to do something like this again in the near future!

-Stephen