Wow.  What more can you say when it comes to Office and SharePoint 2010?  So today was the day – made available to the world.  A global virtual launch was held by Microsoft to over 60 countries in 26 languages – all powered by SharePoint and Office 2010.  Microsoft South Africa streamed it live from their premises this evening.  There’s only one way to describe this version – the sexiest software in the history of the digital age – bar none. I’m not kidding.

Of all the stats and information provided during the launch, the one thing that stood out for me was a comment by Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, during the keynote speech : “Today is the moment of fundamental change”.  You only need to scratch the surface of SharePoint and Office 2010 to understand the depth of what he said.  The business and social networking world is about to change forever.  This is an “epic release”; and a “generational moment that will define industry”.

As a business you owe it to yourself and your company to upgrade to this version.  Unlike previous versions of SharePoint, you won’t need to wait for service packs – there were 8 million people that downloaded the beta version and over a million of those helped iron out the bugs. SharePoint and Office 2010 are ready to go now. (And I quote this from a Microsoft representative at tonight’s launch).

Shrink wrap packs will be in stores from middle June and Microsoft SA have decided to play down that release so they don’t detract from the Soccer World Cup fanfair – good on ya’ Microsoft!  Very patriotic! Ke yona! (this is it, this is the one!). 29 days to go.

Watch for the resources from tonight’s launch here.

The global Twitter tag was #Join2010 if you’d like to catch up on the tweets.