Small businesses in IT rejoice: those using Microsoft products will be happy to know that the newest version of Office will be released next June.

In an exclusive interview with Betanews out in the US, the company revealed that it would be shipping the Microsoft Office 2010 iteration of its line of desktop products next summer.

There will also be a remarkable number of packages to choose from, including Starter, Home and Student, Home and Business, Standard, Professional and Professional Plus, while free versions of Word and Excel which are supported by adverts will be packaged with new computers.

The complete package will include the likes of Access 2010, InfoPath Designer 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and Publisher 2010.

It brings good news for the organisation, which today announced the presence of a fault which was quickly dubbed the "black screen of death", causing the screen to go completely blank upon login - something Microsoft is looking into.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.