Q&A: Kurt DelBene, senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft, discusses what is new in the public beta and what developers can expect from the upcoming release of Office 2010 and related products.

Today, at Microsoft Project Conference 2009, Microsoft Corp. announced that the public beta of Microsoft Project 2010 will become available later this year, and revealed the product’s enhanced project and portfolio management features for the first time. Microsoft also disclosed packaging information that streamlines the number of Microsoft Project editions from four to three

IBM is now offering Microsoft customers free of charge Lotus Symphony software that is compatible with Microsoft Office formats and supports a wide range of widgets which extend the functionality of the software. IBM and a variety of third parties — including independent software vendors, individual developers, customers and IBM business partners — are writing a variety of widgets to take advantage of this new feature.