Microsoft Corporation said it will delay the release of Office 2007 to the latter part of 2006 instead of the initial October release to improve product performance. Likewise, the Office upgrade will be pushed later than the January target.

Both of Microsoft’s main income generators—Office and Windows Vista are now being delayed for quality improvements.

Contrary to a lot of analyst like Brent Thill of Citigroup who says: “The risk is that these persistent delays could indicate quality issues that may dissuade enterprises and consumers from becoming early adopters” and Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox says: “It may not instill much confidence with some customers; Microsoft seems unable to meet its dates”;

I believe this is very good because it show that Microsoft is willing to lose some money for a higher quality product release. Obviously these two guys doesn’t know anything about the history of Microsoft whose philosophy for most part of its existence is to release software as fast as they can and deal with bugs with service packs.

Microsoft has identified that software is maturing right now and same tactics would only do them bad than good and companies especially detractors should be happy that these guys are changing their greedy attitude in hope for better customer satisfaction.

I find it funny that people are complaining about these delays while a while back people are complaining about Microsoft releasing software early. The only problem I see with Microsoft is their PR announcements which may be a little to early, but on the other side, it’s the American way—talk a lot before performing (remember the U.S. World Cup team?).

Both of these may be delayed, but I am sure when they release these products it’s going to be the best release with least bugs they have made in their history; so competitors beware.