Information Week, among other sources, is reporting that the next version of Microsoft Office is due out in 2009. With no official word yet from Microsoft, you have to wonder why they would be rolling a new version out so soon-two years after 2007, where 2007 was four after 2003. It seems like a sufficiently short timeframe that they risk cannibalizing their own potential 2K7 sales; people have been holding off on buying it anyway, how much incentive do you have to pick it up when you can hold out for a year and get the latest and greatest?

One possible explanation is that there are deficiencies in 2007 that they don't want to correct in that product (for whatever reason) but which represent liabilities in the larger market should they be left out there too long against competing products. I don't have any idea what those might be, but one might imagine that more online integration is in store.

Or maybe they're just being optimistic and we can expect to see enough slippage to make it "Office 2011."