Office 12 to beat Longhorn with 2006 roll out

Earlier this week, Microsoft released a few details of the next version of Office, Office 12. The original plan was to release Office 12 with Longhorn, apparently Microsoft has decided to suck it up and roll the suite out in 2006. Not a lot else was said about the forthcoming product, but a few more details have trickled out today. In particular, Office 12 will draw on some of the expertise that Microsoft got when it purchased Groove Networks in order to build more collaborative features into the office suite. A lot of the new collaboration tools that will be rolled into Office 12 are apparently drawn from Microsoft Office Communicator 2005. The VoIP stuff in particular is interesting, as its further encroachment into the guts of the world's most popular office suite lends credence to the idea that VoIP is poised to wipe out traditional long distance in the business space real soon now.