We've all heard the stories and experienced the stress and frustration of not being able to access content when and where we want it. Whether you're at a baseball game when a client calls, or you're at a friend's house without your laptop and you want to share your great fantasy football spreadsheet, being away from your PC often meant you could not get to your key documents. But not anymore. Here's why:

Office 2010 & Web Apps + Windows Live + Office Mobile 2010 = Office Anywhere

I've seen a lot of pitches around this notion of "anywhere access." Until now, its promise hasn't been truly realized -- something important has always been compromised, whether it's support, document fidelity, ease of use, or product capabilities.  With Office 2010, we want to help you get "anywhere access" without the compromise.

Over the many years we have worked on productivity, customers have consistently told us they really care about their content and the fidelity of their documents. Ensuring that customers can get access and work when and where they want, with the confidence their documents will always remain intact, was a key development priority for Office 2010.  

How did we make good on vision for "anywhere access"? Here's how it works:

Office 2010 apps work together with the Office Web Apps in Windows Live SkyDrive (or SharePoint 2010 for our enterprise customers), so you can open and save your content to the cloud directly from within the Office apps.  When you are away from your PC, you can use the Office Web Apps from a browser or Office Mobile on your smartphone to get to your content in the cloud. You can also share your documents with your friends and family.

David Salzberg, Office 2010 beta user, husband and father of two, sums this scenario up better than I ever could:

 "With Word and Excel Mobile I now have access to view and edit all the documents I have stored on Skydrive - giving me the ability to work anywhere. It's so easy to store and retrieve my files to Skydrive from my desktop - and give access to anyone or everyone who needs them, too. I can't wait until everyone I work with is using Skydrive."

According to Pew Research, 69% of Americans already use some form of cloud computing. As more of us embrace the cloud, the value of Office Web Apps - familiar user interface  and uncompromised fidelity -  will become more important in the anywhere access experience. Considering the 500 million Windows Live users who will be able to use the Office Web Apps and the fact that over 250 million smartphones will ship in 2010, we are really excited to help people be truly productive anywhere they are.

As I pointed out in a previous post, feedback from the beta community has been instrumental in building Office 2010. Eighty-two percent of all beta users see the combination of SkyDrive with Office 2010 as a natural and easy way to share documents. Together with Office Mobile, I am looking forward to seeing our customers do great things with Office 2010, anywhere they want.

Starting on June 15th, Office 2010 will be generally available in many countries.  I hope you give it a try and let us know what you think.

-- Takeshi Numoto

Corporate Vice President, Office