If you’re the type of person who likes to test-drive the latest and greatest software (or you’re the type of person who reads an Office Engineering blog…), then you’re probably familiar with the pain that can be part of trying out new software for the first time. My name is Paul Barr, Lead Program Manager for the Click-to-Run team in Office 2010, and we’ve built Click-to-Run with you in mind. What follows is a more in-depth post on the technology introduced in the New Ways to Try and Buy Microsoft Office 2010 announcement.

Delivering rich programs like Office over the internet hasn’t changed much in the last decade. Sure, we have self-extracting executables, securely signed files, and download managers, but all of these fall short of solving what we think are the biggest problems with downloading and installing large applications:

1. It’s slooooowwww. Office has a lot of great features and content, but it’s also very big, and it takes a long time to get the whole thing downloaded, installed, and running. This prevents users from getting the products in any sort of context to the current task they’re trying to perform.
2. Applications are often out of date. How many times have you downloaded new software only to be prompted to update it immediately?
3. Installing a new version can sometimes mean uninstalling the old one, or it might be disruptive to other software you have installed on the System.

What is Click-to-Run?

Click-to-Run is a new software delivery mechanism built by the Office product team. It’s based on core virtualization and streaming technologies from the Microsoft App-V team in Cambridge, MA. Click-to-Run is optimized for home users on broadband connections (at least 1Mbps), and there are three key pillars of the investment:

1. It’s fast.  Home users can stream Office and be running their apps in as little as 90 seconds (under 5 minutes on average), or about 10% of the time it would take otherwise. The products still run locally utilizing the PC’s resources, they don’t “run in the cloud”.
2. With Click-to-Run, it’s easier to always be running the latest and most secure version of Office.  Click-to-Run users get the latest bits right away (rather than old bits that need to be patched immediately, which can take another 60 minutes over the internet).  Click-to-Run users also get updated automatically over time, with no need to download or install patches.  The product seamlessly updates itself in the background.
3. It’s low impact, and co-exists with other software on the machine.  Click-to-Run products are virtualized, so they don’t conflict with other software.  For instance, users can run Office 2007 for their production scenarios while they evaluate a trial of Office 2010. This addresses a major user pain point. 

Click-to-Run products also take up about half the disk space of normal products, they repair more completely, and they won’t break other software installed on the PC because they have private copies of all of their files and registration.

Click-to-Run is not a new Office “product”, it’s a new way of delivering and updating the products with which you are already familiar. Click-to-Run delivery is available for both the Office Home and Student 2010, and Office Home and Business 2010 products. It has full language support, and will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit Operating Systems (although only the 32-bit version of Office is actually run on both platforms).

How does Click-to-Run work?

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Read the rest @> Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering : Click-to-Run: Delivering Office in the 21st Century