As of this past Tuesday, the release name of SharePoint vNext or “14”, as it was referred to by codename and/or the Office version it would be associated with, was officially unveiled to be SharePoint 2010.  Officially, it was released with an interview with Chris Capossela, Senior VP of Microsoft’s Information Worker (IW) Product Management.  It not only talked about Office and SharePoint, bur also introduced the new Exchange 2010 Beta release that day.  Exchange 2010 is expected to launch later this year, leading the 2010 platform wave.  The entire interview with Chris can be found here.  Of course the announcement to the SharePoint world was done on the official SharePoint team blog by none other than Tom Rizzo, Senior Director of SharePoint.

Oh, and if you’ve gotten used to MOSS as an acronym, I’m sorry.  It’s gone like the Dodo bird (or the previous “SPS” acronym).  As of now, there is no naming change for Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).  However, the server product will be called Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (No Office in the name, folks.).  Since the MSS acronym is already taken by the Search Server products, we’ve been asked by the Product Group to simply refer to SharePoint as SharePoint.  [Note: What?!? No acronym?!? Will wonders ever cease?]

Office, as a brand, will encompass not only the client applications, but also the Office Web Applications and Office Mobile applications and platforms.  Pay close attention on the Office Web App front, as it will be a platform changer, in my opinion.

(Is it bad that I get a giddy feeling of excitement about the next version of the SharePoint platform?  My wife says it is the ‘geek’ in me coming out.)