Posted on 09/21/2007 6:54:03 AM PDT by NYer
The week's not off to a great start for Microsoft. On Monday, a European court upheld almost $1 billion in antitrust penalties against the software maker. A day later, it's IBM that is taking aim at Microsoft with the release of a free office software suite called Lotus Symphony.
IBM said Tuesday that Symphony, based on open source software from the OpenOffice.org project, will be made available as a free download essentially to whoever wants it. The package contains a word processor called Lotus Symphony Documents, as well as Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations. IBM is calling the suite "enterprise-grade productivity software" and points out that it's based on many of the same tools found in its pricey Lotus Notes 8 e-mail and collaboration platform.
Because it's free, Lotus Symphony could present a significant challenge to Microsoft's new Office 2007 suite in the market for office productivity software. Some commercial software buyers have expressed concerns about Office 2007's price and compatibility with older applications. The software is based on a new format developed by Microsoft called Office Open XML. Earlier this month, the format failed to gain fast track approval from the International Organization for Standardization.
As an Open Office derivative, Lotus Symphony employs the Open Document Format to ensure cross-application portability of data. ODF is an approved ISO format, a fact that appeals to many enterprise software buyers -- particularly those in the government market. "With the Open Document Format, businesses can unlock their information," said IBM software chief Steve Mills, in a statement.
Earlier this month, IBM said it would donate portions of the Lotus Notes code to OpenOffice.org, which governs the Open Office project.
To date, Open Office has failed to put much of a dint in Microsoft's multi-billion dollar office software business. However, that could start to change in light of Monday's announcement. IBM said it has tasked 35 programmers with creating enhancements for Symphony. Because it's an open source project, those enhancements will be made available to other vendors that offer versions of Open Office, including Sun Microsystems.
IBM's Symphony announcement takes a page from the company's Linux playbook. Big Blue is a significant backer of the open source operating system, though it derives no direct revenue from the software. Rather, IBM has created an ecosystem of customers and partners that buy IBM's commercial middleware products to tie together systems built on Linux. The strategy not only boosts demand for IBM middleware, it also denies to Microsoft some valuable market share. IBM now appears to be adopting a similar strategy in the desktop market.
OpenOffice isn't the only challenge to Microsoft's dominance in the productivity software market. Google recently entered the fray with an array of hosted applications sold as a service under the Google Apps brand. Earlier this month, outsourcer Capgemini said it would add support for Google Apps Premier to its service offerings.
FWIW, my Debian machine’Open Office and my WXP machine can go back and forth opening and editing documents from/to MS Word and Excel with no troubles at all.
IBM bought Lotus, which had, by that time, come out with a Windows version. How much of that code IBM is using???
"I found Open Office to be slow: what do you guys think?"
Yeah, it is, but "Moores Law" will take care of that. I'm running Office 2003, and when I have to replace that, I'll switch to "Open Office".
Hey ... it has its advantages. Accessing IBM's web sites - well, that's another issue.
Same here. There are interchange problems with the database software, though.
Already downloaded it, two days ago, but could not use it, it would not complete the install,
because I am a “stick in the mud”, hate Gates and Microsoft, and still running Win98 (it works great, even runs some WinXP apps, but I can no longer get the best anti-virus apps and discovered my digital camera software wants a higher OS also).
Maybe now I’ll just switch to Linux or Mac altogether. Will never get another Win OS.
Does Soros fund OSF? It sounds like something he would do to take down American capitalism. OSF = socialism, one world order, anti-business.
Go iMac and kiss your worries away! Still using my 10 y/o with dial up at home and have not downloaded virus updates in years. Works like a charm; albeit a tad slow ;-)
I think it will be a while before openoffice can compete with 2003
May I steal this? Do we work for the sam company?
Your client wouldn’t happen to be a tech sector giant, would they??
I work on-site at the facilities of one of my employer’s major customers, and they’re going to make that same change; shift email from Notes to Outlook.
I think the rationale is that, despite the elevated security Notes has provided, they’ve had to take so many additional measures that they might as well make some aspect of SMTP life easier and just use Outlook.
I mean, after you get your enterprise loaded up with McAffee, and you install a hardware eMail filtering appliance, and whatever else...
Eventually you get to the place that using Notes for email just isn’t worth the hassle, anymore. New hires can’t just walk in and be conversant with it like they can with Outlook, so it becomes more of a liability than an asset.
Personally, I think Notes, and the way it dfeiantly refuses to use standard Windows keys — like F9 instead of F5 to “Refresh” the mail folder — is just IBM’s slap back at Bill Gates.
Tried to down load it for almost 2 hours. Never did come up right. Guess I’ll just pass.
Been THERE. Here's how it worked out:
Several years ago my Win98 machine was on the way out and I was contemplating what to do. My brother -- much more the tech head than I, and NO fan of M$ -- had built a few machines for a client base on XP Pro, and finally configured one for himself. Spelunking around in it for awhile, he finally sold himself on it as an okay deal. So, when I began talking to him about building a new PC for me, he was able to talk conversantly about the O/S and make a solid recommendation for XP Pro.
I took him up on it, and it's been pretty good all the way along. I've been able to load up all of my kid's learning games, some of which harken back to the Win95 era. XP Pro really IS very stable, and it's a worthy step UP from Win98; worth cutting it a break, anyway. You might well consider giving it a go, if you can find a copy. You'll still be able to run all of your existing apps; it'll talk to your camera... In short, your computing experience will be improved without much change from the behavior you're used to, AND it really IS more stable than Win98.
Now, all that stated, I'm NOT -- absolutely NOT -- migrating to Vista. This XP Pro box is my LAST MS O/S until (if??) Redmond steps away from the bong and cranks out something that doesn't need 650MB just to boot up.
As of now -- if I were forced to get a new machine today -- I'd eithr get a dual core MacBook, or configure a whole new PC with LINUX, which I'd need to do some intensive research on, first, but feel confident I could manage.
I just downloaded it a couple hours ago to my work laptop. You could tell their servers must have been getting pounded, but once it got started, it went well. I used the http download since the other thing wouldn’t go.
Took a look at each of the three and was able to jump right in since it is so similar to Office. Seems to do everything I need.
Won’t work on anything below XP. Shoot. I wanted it for my old home Win98SE machine. I was thinking of getting a new one anyway.
self ping.
On a related note, I just tested out Google Docs collaborative presentation creation features, it’s very efficient and easy to format.
http://visioo-writer.tuxfamily.org/EN/
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/odfviewer
http://odftoolkit.openoffice.org/background.html
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2006/07/odf-viewer-for-firefox.html
There are several free viewers available, like Word, Excel, etc, viewers.
There are 2 paid for that can be embedded in the document itself, also.
Thanks for the viewer links. I don’t know where I’m going with this - I just bought two PCs with MS Office 2007 preloaded. There hasn’t been a “must have” upgrade to Office in a decade, and the cash drain has gotten old.
Open Office is really good. Not a big learning curve at all, in fact, less than getting used to Office 2007.
I’ve been migrating over to Linux, pretty much done with M$.
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