MS Confirms Office 2003 Small Business Edition

At its Convergence 2003 conference in Orlando, Microsoft group vice president Jeff Raikes offered insight into packaging plans for the upcoming release of Office System 2003.

Previously reported by BetaNews, Office System 2003 is name given to Microsoft's new Office family composed of Microsoft Office 2003, FrontPage 2003, InfoPath 2003, OneNote 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2.0.

As first reported by Microsoft Watch, Raikes disclosed during his keynote presentation that Office System 2003 would be released to manufacturing in June. Along with a Professional Edition SKU, Raikes said Microsoft would offer a Small Business Edition of the office suite. Office XP Small Business Edition is currently available, but only through OEMs that preload it on new PCs.

Raikes would not detail which components of Office System 2003 would be included with each package, but acknowledged the Small Business Edition SKU would feature Publisher 2003. Pricing specifics for Office System 2003 are also unknown at this point.