“It is an exciting time for the MacBU with updates to our current products and the first public announcement about the next version of Office for Mac. For several years we have focused on providing the best Microsoft Exchange client for the Mac, and the Web Services Edition delivers that today for Entourage users,” said Eric Wilfrid, general manager for the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft.

While Office for Mac builds on the work done with Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition, Microsoft says it’s more than just a name change. With full support for Exchange synchronization, Office for Mac will also deliver significant changes to better interface with Mac OS X including a new high-speed file-based database with support Time Machine and Spotlight and fully Cocoa based programming.