After already announcing plans for an Ultimate edition of Windows Vista, Microsoft confirmed this week that it also plans an Ultimate edition of Office 2007.

The new retail package, which was not part of the Office 2007 lineup announced back in February, will offer nearly all the components available to large businesses in one $679 product. A Microsoft representative said on Thursday that the new entrant in the lineup was "created as a result of customer feedback," but didn't offer more details on its origins.

Office Ultimate is similar to the enterprise edition that is available only to large businesses, and includes standards like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, along with Publisher, the OneNote note-taking software, the Groove collaboration suite, Access database and InfoPath forms software. Microsoft did not announce pricing for the enterprise edition, since it is only available for volume licensing customers.