On Monday Microsoft announced Office 2013. Yesterday I watched the video of the presentation and  it wasn't Office that caught my attention.

Office 2013 is the tip of an iceberg and, for once, Microsoft was happy to let folks know that the whole iceberg is big. Steve Ballmer repeatedly mentioned not just Office but the entire Microsoft biosphere of products and technologies including Windows, Azure, Windows phones, Surface tablets, and more.

Office 2013 will be the glue that makes all this an integrated biosphere. It's a very compelling story, one that no other vendor can tell.

I was impressed.

The audience for the presentation didn't seem to get it. At points where my jaw dropped thinking about the implications, there was no applause. And on the day of the announcement Computerworld ran an article titled "Windows XP and Vista: No Office 2013 for you," managing to completely miss the point and ignoring that Microsoft's policy for several years has clearly been to support just two Windows versions, in this case Windows 8 and Windows 7.

There is much more to the Office 2013 announcement than meets the eye.