Notification of when the new Excel client is going to be released

There has been unofficial mention of a new excel client tool in advanced stages of development for over a couple of years now. 

I want to know when to expect this as I have been waiting to hear for absolutely ages and the current excel client is poor and very frustrating/time consuming to use - even the Site Catalyst enabled report builder is not that great as it has had a lot of the guts chopped out from the original HBX version...