The beta version of the newest MS Office which is MS Office 15 has been released today. In this new version, additional and more improved features has been incorporated in order to make MS Office updated with today's growing market.

MS Office introduces a redesign of the classic MS Office with the old and loved features together with new and innovative applications which makes MS Office "more updated". Steve Balmer, the Chief Executive of Microsoft described this as an "ambitious" redesign. Balmer also added that "This is a new generation of Office where Office is a service first. We'll continue to make Office in traditional ways but the Office we'll talk about and show you today is the first round of Office that has been designed from the get-go for Office to be a service."

There are two things which are considered as a "major" improvement for MS Office. The first one is the cloud service provided by Microsoft. Users would be able to save their documents in the cloud by default instead of saving it in the hardware of their computers. The cloud service for this is Microsoft's SkyDrive. Through the incorporation of the cloud service, users would be able to access, store, and edit their documents in any type of device wherever they are. Some of the features that can be easily accessed through the MS Office cloud service are settings, spelling preferences, and document templates.

Another major feature added in MS Office 15 is its design wherein it is now "touch-friendly". This means that MS Office can easily be navigated through touchscreen devices or through the use of a stylus. This change was said to be incorporated because of the growing market in tablets. Microsoft previously announced that they would be releasing their own line of SUrface tablets and this change in MS Office 15 would make sure that users are able to utilize MS Office 15 in their tablets.

Aside from these major changes, Microsoft also changed the design of MS Office 15 making it more "Metro" in order to coincide with their Windows 8 design. There is also the incorporation of social sites like Skype and LinkedIn in order to make sharing documents much easier. Overall, the changes incorporated in MS Office 15 are all necessary in order to keep up with the growing competition other competitors such as Google and Apple.

The Consumer Preview of MS Office 15 can be downloaded and tested from office.com/preview. The target release date for MS Office 15 is speculated to be on October, 2012 which is the same target period for the Windows 8 release.