"Microsoft Project 2010 is the most significant release of Microsoft Project in over a decade," said Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft.  "The fresh, simple and intuitive features of Microsoft Project 2010 will enable teams and organizations of all sizes to select and deliver the right projects on time and on budget."

Microsoft Project 2010 builds on the Microsoft Office Project 2007 foundation with flexible work management solutions and the right collaboration tools for occasional and professional project managers, and includes a pathway to more advanced project and portfolio management capabilities as business needs evolve.

The release of Microsoft Project 2010 comes at a time when the industry is gaining steam.  According to IDC, the project and portfolio management market will see growth as companies will rely on project and portfolio management tools to analyze their current and future project performance.*

Microsoft Project 2010 helps organizations reduce costs by enabling smarter and more informed decisions about budgeting and resource allocation.  Through a dramatically enhanced user experience, Microsoft Project 2010 also drives team productivity with integration across familiar Microsoft technologies including Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Exchange Server.  This integration allows a powerful business collaboration platform and proven project and portfolio management to result in a familiar, connected environment for customers to manage the simplest or the most complex projects.

Microsoft will release three editions of Microsoft Project: Microsoft Project Standard 2010, Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and Microsoft Project Server 2010.  Key enhancements designed to appeal to both IT administrators and end users include these:

• Unified project and portfolio management with a common user interface and experience across the project life cycle; improved workflow controls that can be customized; better demand management to capture all types of work requests across an organization; and powerful reporting and business intelligence capabilities
• Improved productivity with effective collaboration built on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010; enhanced collaboration and reporting; integration with Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010; and simplified time reporting
• Enhanced user experience and adoption with the familiar Microsoft Office Fluent user interface and new intuitive design; user-controlled scheduling for greater flexibility when creating simple or detailed project plans; the addition of a new timeline view for sequential overview of project schedules; and new Web-based project editing
• A scalable and connected platform with integration across related Microsoft technologies for connected and familiar work management on the PC, mobile phone and browser; better interoperability with third-party systems from updates to the Project Server Interface; 64-bit compatibility for performance improvement; and removal of ActiveX dependency for improved security and ease of deployment across an organization

Microsoft Project 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products, which includes Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Microsoft Visio 2010, and is designed to give people a consistent experience across devices, making it easier to create and edit documents and collaborate from any location.

Availability

All Microsoft Project Conference registered attendees will receive a free licensed copy of Microsoft Project Professional 2010 after launch; more information is available at http://www.keystoneondemand.com/tour/content/microsoft_project_2010_training. Microsoft Project 2010 will be available in the first half of 2010.  More information about Microsoft Project 2010 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/project.

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