The primary purpose of Outlook Web App (OWA) is to give Exchange users access to their mailboxes from anywhere through the same Outlook UI and functionality they already know and love. In this release, OWA has evolved to reach not only laptop or desktop computers, but also tablets and phones. As we did with desktop browsers, we’ll continue investing in wider and richer support for tablet and phone platforms in the future. You can try our latest release by signing up for the Office 365 Customer Preview Small Business Premium or Enterprise plans.

Beginning this week at the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC), you will have opportunities to have in-depth dialogues with the Exchange team – both in-person and virtually. We kick off this week with a blog post that highlights a need of organizations everywhere and of every size as they look towards ensuring they have control of their data in a secure and manageable fashion. We hope to continue the conversation with you this week at the conference, and in the future via the EHLO and Office Next blogs. Today Harv Bhela, General Manager for Exchange Program Management, joins Office Next to kick off the week.

In the new Office and SharePoint, we are introducing a new cloud app model that enables developers to build apps that are scalable and flexible using web standards, such as HTML5 and CSS3. We are also introducing a new Office Store for developers to publish their apps, and for people to find and try apps with confidence.

In the next release of Office, we have added two additional formats for use: Strict Open XML and Open Document Format (ODF) 1.2. We have also added support for opening PDF documents so they can be edited within Word and saved to any supported format. By adding support for these standardized document formats, Microsoft Office 2013 provides users with more choice for office document interoperability. Regardless of your preferred document file format, the new Microsoft Office gives you more options for sharing, collaborating, and archiving office documents. This post explores the details of the support for these standards in the new Office.

We often see IT set a significant amount of their discretionary spend aside to help them deal with deployment surprises that pop up. In the new Office, we’ve done a lot of work to help give IT much more visibility into what people are using within Office and SharePoint so that they can be better prepared going forward.

Tristan Davis, Senior Program Manager Lead, Word

Nearly two-thirds of user sessions in Word contain no editing at all – the only things that happen once the document is opened are scrolling and zooming changes as the user reads and processes the content. The Word engineering team wanted to focus on creating a refreshed, modern reading experience for the new Word; one that optimized for the times when the user is focused on consuming, not creating, content. The goal was to create a clean and distraction-free environment that went beyond presenting an electronic equivalent of paper to create an experience that felt at home on all types of devices – from tablets to laptops to smartphones.The result is a new reading experience in Word centered on a feature called Read Mode, which essentially turns your Word documents into an interactive digital magazine. You can try it out by participating in the Office Customer Preview, and in this post, I will provide a quick tour of the changes we’ve made.

I’m Beth Petry, I lead Customer Programs for the Office division. Throughout the cycle I’ve had the chance to work with many people evaluating Office. It is an exciting time for us to share it with the world. We’re very excited to have your feedback. Office Preview is off and running!

Many thanks to those of you who have downloaded the preview release. We’re getting a lot of great feedback. Please keep it coming! If you haven’t had a chance to get it yet, you can find the preview release of Office on http://office.com/preview.

Developers can now build apps that enable brand new user experiences and scenarios by combining web technologies and cloud services right in Office and SharePoint. New experiences that we could not have dreamt off before. As an example, customers can acquire a collection of apps on stitch them together to create powerful solutions to monitor metrics with KPIs right in Excel. Apps in SharePoint that help solve specific goals that users have like planning events or managing their business contacts.

Signing in to Office 365 Home Premium unlocks a world of new functionality between Office and the cloud. Whether you're using a phone, PC, or tablet, you can be at home, school, work, or on the bus and your files and applications are there wherever you are. Learn how we've connected Office to the cloud to make anywhere, anytime productivity possible and see how subscription and sign-in are how we make all of this goodness happen.   

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of joining members of the media from around the world and several customers to unveil the new Office. Watching people’s first reactions to our new products and services is one of the best parts of my job. The Customer Preview is critical for us to deliver a fantastic final product. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do! With Office 2010, we received more than two million smiles and frowns – in addition to all the other feedback – and this was very important in shaping the final release. I’m hoping to see even more feedback on the new Office.