On Monday this week, I attended the Microsoft Partner Briefing in Manchester.  Key members of Microsoft UK outlined the roadmap and new technology coming over the next few months.

Things to look out for include the next release of Office 365 and Microsoft Office 2013.

No official release date was confirmed for Office 2013 but you can download the technical preview from http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/officepreview

James Akerigg demonstrated a few features of office 2013 including the ability to publish documents from Word 2013 directly to blog sites such as WordPress and Blogger.

James also demonstrated new features in Excel 2013 such as the new “flood fill” feature where you can dynamically split addresses and contact details by changing a few entries. Another feature demonstrated was being able to plot Excel data directly to Bing maps using the new office App store.

Another interesting feature demonstrated was the ability to use the Office 2013 Web App offline!

Later in the day, we met with Microsoft management to discuss the strategy for selling Microsoft’s cloud services including Microsoft CRM Online, Office 365 and Windows Intune