Microsoft Office 2013 has received the push to Release To Manufacturing stage. Office 2013, just like Windows 8, is a daring and ambitious effort from the Redmond crew, which is a ways departure from what we have come know the Office Suite to be.

Office 2013 will include the entire host of Office applications, along with cloud services, and servers. The most notable feature, however, is the fact that it has been optimized for touch input, making it easy to use even on tablets. Another nifty feature of the new Office suite is its integration with SkyDrive, Microsoft’s own cloud storage solution which will allow the user to access any documents from anywhere on the planet, provided they have internet access.

If you’re an MSDN or TehNet subscriber, the final version of Office should be available for download sometime mid-November. For the regular mortals out there, the final version of Office will be hitting store shelves sometime in the first quarter of 2013.