Who's Ready For Office 2010? | Forrester Blogs

Another timely Office reality check from Forrester; see the full post for more analysis

So what do you need to know about Office 2010 to inform your upgrade decision? To start:

• The pain is gone. For those already familiar with the Office 2007, the upgrade to Office is painless compared to the 2007 transition. In fact, early users say the addition of the Fluent UI to Outlook felt right and that they could easily adapt without losing a step. A bevy of new features, such as the Outlook Social Connector or video and image editing within PowerPoint, will help drive unique ROIs with benefits coming from different improvements. Office has always been a tough business case to make because the productivity gains are hard to measure, but at least with Office 2010 there is strong evidence that a case can be made for the investment.
• Licenses make the upgrade decision a no-brainer. One-third of firms Forrester surveyed last month said they plan to upgrade to Office 2010 within the next year, primarily because it’s part of their license agreement. Two-thirds of firms plan to upgrade within the next two to three years, and those not planning to upgrade say it’s mostly because they just finished rolling out 2007. Only 3% say they are moving off of Office. For most it’s still not a decision of if, but when. And if you already have the license to upgrade, it’s hardly a decision at all.

Who's Ready For Office 2010? | Forrester Blogs