Nearly a year ago, Microsoft released Office 2007 to corporate users and so began the slow and methodical evaluation of the software (unless, of course, you were an early adopter).

With migrations to Vista, which is intertwined with Office, slowly looming on the drawing boards for many companies over the next three years and beyond, here’s a look at some of the questions to help pick apart Office and figure out how, when and where it fits into corporate desktop, infrastructure, VoIP and software-as-a service plans, and the target it presents to OpenOffice.org-based suites and online productivity tools popping up on the Web.

What is different about Office 2007?

Well, this isn’t your father’s office suite. Office 2007, or what Microsoft calls the Office System, comes in eight versions and contains 15 programs, eight servers and seven services or add-ons. Users don’t have to buy or deploy all those pieces, but the days of the Word-Excel-PowerPoint-Access bundle now seem quaint by comparison. With the Office 2007 suite, users can set up content management, integrate with online services, deploy real-time communication tools and other infrastructures using Office system pieces. That means Office is no longer a desktop decision made by the desktop team. It is also an infrastructure decision that ultimately involves IT. And it is a path that must include consideration of how it will integrate with third-party vendors, especially when deployments hit the VoIP level.