Microsoft has announced on its official blog that the Office engineering team has signed off on the Release to Manufacture (RTM) build for Office 2013, reaching a significant milestone in the programme’s development.

Kirk Koenigsbauer Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Office Division writes that:

“This is the most ambitious release of Office we’ve ever done. It spans the full family of Office applications, servers and cloud services. The new Office has a fresh, touch friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social, reading, note-taking, meetings and communications. We are proud to achieve this milestone and are eager to deliver this exciting release to our customers.”

Additionally, Micsrosoft have a number of programs that provide business customers with early access so they can begin testing, piloting and adopting Office within their organizations:

• We will begin rolling out new capabilities to Office 365 Enterprise customers in our next service update, starting in November through general availability.
• Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance will be able to download the Office 2013 applications as well as other Office products including SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 through the Volume Licensing Service Center by mid-November. These products will be available on the Volume Licensing price list on December 1.
• IT professionals and developers will be able to download the final version via their TechNet or MSDN subscriptions by mid-November.

While essentially ready for market, availability is planned only for the first quarter of 2013. For customers who buy Office 2010 from 19th October, they will receive a free copy of Office 2013 when it becomes available.