Microsoft Wednesday announced the official worldwide availability of its feature-rich Office 2010 productivity suite, SharePoint, Visio, Microsoft Project, as well as new Web-based capabilities that have been specifically designed to compete with Google in the cloud software arena.

Microsoft Office 2010, which is an extremely attractive upgrade to Office 2007, will largely impress power users with its astounding range of new features, enhancing Office 2007 in terms of a more polished interface, a much deeper user-experience, and the notable addition of cloud computing elements. Some other usability improvements that form a part of Office 2010 include - a 64-bit version for supporting massive Excel spreadsheets, and multi-threading to facilitate quicker opening and closing.

Commenting on Office 2010, Burton Group analyst Guy Creese said: "Office 2010 is no longer just the productivity suite. It's a full-blown collaboration system now." Further, for smartphone users, Microsoft is also offering Office Mobile 2010 as a free download from Windows Mobile Marketplace. The mobile phone-specific software will enable the users of Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphones to browse, edit, and sync documents.

Meanwhile, along with the feature upgrades, Microsoft Office 2010 also comes with another noteworthy change - that is, Microsoft has withdrawn its offers related to upgrade pricing discounts. As such, the Office 2010 range starts at $99 for the Office Professional Academic version; with the top-end version being the $499-priced Office Professional.