RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone. It is also an appropriate time to re-emphasize our sincere gratitude to the more than 5,000 organizations and partners who have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products. Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we’ve had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version – that’s more than 3 times the number of 2007 beta downloads! The feedback that we’ve received from all these programs has shaped the set of products we’re excited about, and that I’m sure will delight our customers.

Our Volume License customers with active Software Assurance (SA) on these products will be one of the first to receive the 2010 set of products. They will be able to download the products in English via the Volume Licensing Service Center starting April 27. Customers without SA will be able to purchase the new products through Volume Licensing from Microsoft partners starting May 1.