Second, along with the new edition of Office 2008, the team is hard at work on the next version of Office for Mac which will launch in time for the 2010 Holiday season. This next version includes a new application– Outlook for Mac. Outlook for Mac is being built from the ground up as a Mac OS X application using Cocoa. It will have a new database that delivers a reliable, high performance, and integrated experience with Mac OS X.  Users will be able to back-up with Time Machine and search email, calendar and contacts with Spotlight. Additionally, Outlook for Mac and the rest of Office will include Information Rights Management, which helps keep sensitive information for only audiences that you intend.
via (mactopia)

The next big version won’t be ready for a while so assuming that what they said on their blog is true a year from now, it sounds like they will be dropping the name. Until then the new version of Entourage sounds pretty interesting, Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition.

The biggest news here is that they are dropping the WebDAV for a better Web Services type communication with Exchange. This will allow for syncing of notes, tasks and calenders. Something that Outlook has been doing for a long time now. It is interesting they don’t mention contacts, because calenders and contacts are the two big things you would want to sync with exchange.