More companies are switching to the latest version of Office, a survey shows

Microsoft's plan to drive Office adoption in big companies by linking the software to server-based products appears to be working.

More than 40 percent of 243 companies responding to one specific survey question plan to deploy Office 2010 within six months, Forrester Research reported Tuesday.

One major driver of Office 2007 demand is SharePoint Server, Microsoft's Web-based software for sharing and managing documents created with Office. Forrester says that 41 percent of the 233 companies that responded to a separate survey question plan to implement or upgrade SharePoint Server within six months.

Also, the release of Office 2007 Service Pack 1 in December removed a hurdle keeping many companies from upgrading, Forrester says. Office 2007 has been available to businesses since November 2006.

Interestingly, the survey also showed that while 43 percent of companies surveyed already have Office 2010 Download installed, some 60 percent are still running Office XP, which hit the market way back in May 2001.

Forrester based its results on a survey of 259 "IT decision makers" at companies in North America, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.