I was reading through the Google documentation about Chromebooks and found a little golden nugget about something they call "Chromoting":

In the near future, you’ll also be able to run traditional software remotely on our Chrome notebook. Companies like Citrix are developing solutions that will be available in the Web Store, and we are developing a free service called Chromoting that will enable Chrome notebook users to remotely access their existing PCs and Macs.
That means you'll be able to run Microsoft Office and whatever else you want on your Chromebook!