I am aware of of the infamous Considerations for server-side Automation of Office from Microsoft and it clearly lists products from the 2010 suite.
However, today I
Your IT OPS techie should send you a link to any information that suggests this. You should then post the link here.
That way, we can try to get the link corrected. Office hasn't stopped being a COM-based desktop application. Do not attempt to automate it in a multithreaded (server) environment.
Your techie may be thinking of the fact that there are now web versions of some of the Office products.