In a announcement made on the official blog of the Microsoft Office product development group, Takeshi Numoto, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Office, gave the news that office 2010 has reached the RTM (Release to Manufacturing stage.)

The term RTM that is also known as “Release to Marketing” means that the software that was under development has reached a certain level of maturity and it is ready to mass distribution. (This distribution which can be online or retail normally comes after heavy testings of the product.)

On this new milestone from Microsoft, Mr Numote thanks all the organizations that got involve on the project either by testing the product or working directly on the project. According to him more than 5000 organizations and partners were involve in the deployment and testing sides of Office 2010. He also mentions that more than 7.5 million people downloaded the beta version, which gives more than 3 times over than its predecessor the Office beta 2007.

The dates of the product release goes as follows:

* April 27 - Customers with Volume Licenses with active Software Assurance (AS) are the first ones to download the product, via Volume Licensing Service Center

* May 1 – Customers without (SA) will be able to get the products through Microsoft’s Partners.

* May 12 – It is going to be officially launched to business customers.

* June – The product will be available in Retail Stores – Preorder Microsoft Office 2010