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September 18, 2007 11:17 AM PDT
Rivals make run at Microsoft Office
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IBM on Tuesday announced the release of Lotus Symphony, a suite of free desktop applications based on the OpenOffice.org open-source product.
The computing giant, which has been challenging Microsoft's desktop dominance for years, said that Lotus Symphony is a standards-based alternative to Microsoft's proprietary Office.
Separately, on Monday afternoon, Yahoo said that it paid $350 million to acquire Zimbra, a start-up that developed a Web-based e-mail and collaboration package comparable with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.
Meanwhile, Google on Monday introduced Google Presentations, an online version of Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation application that complements Google's Web-hosted document editor and spreadsheet.
The flurry of investment in productivity software points to technology and business changes in the IT industry that are making Microsoft's cash cow vulnerable to alternatives, particularly among small businesses and consumers.
But don't expect Microsoft coffers to start draining tomorrow. Analysts expect Microsoft to retain the great majority of its Office customers as it adjusts its product development to the Web and open source, even as competitors try to siphon off its Office revenue.
"I think there's some blood in the water between Microsoft not getting its Open XML (Office document formats) fast-track standards approval and the European Commission ruling," said Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner, referring to two recent Microsoft setbacks.
Microsoft failed to get its Office Open XML formats certified as ISO standards through its accelerated process earlier this month. On Monday, the European Commission ruled in favor of regulators in an antitrust case that could change how Microsoft does business in Europe.
Microsoft has shown some signs of reacting to the full-court press it's seeing from competitors.
Last week, it made a version of its Office suite available to students for $60. It is also developing Office Live, a set of online services that complements Office and is aimed at small businesses.
A Microsoft spokesman on Tuesday said that Office meets its customers' needs because the company continues to invest in it.
"Competition is good for the industry and good for customers. That said, Microsoft Office continues to be the overwhelming choice for a broad range of organizations and individuals," said Jacob Jaffe, director of Office at Microsoft. "Microsoft Office has changed as people's work has changed, and the alternatives for the most part have aimed to meet the needs of the past."
Low-risk volleyIBM on Tuesday offered up beta versions of the Lotus Symphony applications--a document editor, spreadsheet and presentation program--to end users and business customers for free download.
The applications run on Windows and Linux, and a Mac version is planned.
IBM executives said that the company's backing of OpenOffice-based software and the open-source project is similar to its decision in the 1990s to push Linux into businesses.
For support, the company is pointing its customers to online forums on its Web site.
But company observers expect IBM to start to make paid support services available to large customers.
For IBM, which makes about half of its revenue from professional services, pushing into desktop software with Lotus Symphony is a low-risk way to try to upset the balance of power using standards as a lever, said Stephen O'Grady, an analyst at RedMonk.
"If (Lotus Symphony) destabilizes Microsoft's Office business, that's a huge win and the potential risk for IBM is essentially nil because it's not a business where they are competitive anyhow. And it won't cannibalize any of its own products," O'Grady said.
Realistically, Lotus Symphony applications don't have the same advanced features found in Microsoft Office.
IBM said the programs are designed for ease of use and to be easily integrated with other applications. In addition, IBM made pains to point out that the programs support OpenDocument Format, or ODF, a standard document format. They also will work with Microsoft Office documents and Adobe Systems' PDF.
Stripped-down productivity applications could have an appeal in some corporate computing situations, such as small businesses or companies that don't want to pay a full Office license for employees who rarely use the suite, some analysts said.
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A tragedy I guess where our govt. love to spend more of our money than saving and putting them to good use.
Unless our governing bodies embrace the open software we are still doom to paying for office.
Look at the University?... Our so-call learning institution... Are they using Office or Open Office? They are not learning compare to our overseas counterpart.
It is not the software availability.. it who is controlling the minds. The perception that MS Office is the best needs to be corrected. The inability of our teachers to learn and improve needs to be reassessed.
You are talking about power users. Most of use pay $200 at least for a simple type writer. I am not saying that the program is not useful.. It is but only to the only few. WHY DOES THE REST WHO DO NOT NEED ALL THOSE COLLABORATION NEED TO SUFFER?
My point is the Govt. is determining what we have to use. Unless the Govt. change and open itself to all document format there is no free choice. Open document format is already an international standard but Microsoft refuse to have it in their software instead they tried to sell their proprietary format as an international standard.
Point is I am not saying that their software is not good ... I am saying that all these other software have no chance of wide usage unless the GOVT, FEDS, ALL GOVERNING BODY are open to it.
These open source software are now widely used overseas. In fact some government already make them a standard. Billions of dollars safe in licensing fees could be better use.
I my consultation business I have save businesses with 30 or more users in licensing fees by limiting Office installation. I identify the power users and basically using a survey find out whether MS Office or OpenOffice need to be installed in each computer. Majority of the company could just work with OpenOffice.
I have seen enough waste in the Government from the city to the FEDS especially in the field of IT.
That is what Google or IBM should do. Create an excel an access like aplication where you dont have to use commands but clicks. That is the hardest thing about access and excel, they ask you to introduce commands. We, users, just need the cliks. That is like the calculators, you dont put formula, you just press bottons.
When we go to college, we know how hard Access and Excel may be. Google, please create a clik by clik version of something like Access or Excel.
Anything is better than Word.
PowerPoint is almost a parody of itself.
Excel has some very useful features that are powerful if you want to bother buying and reading a manual.
At one point, MSFT announced Excel would be enterprise-class with a potential of 3 million records. A quant, sold-out SPSS user, told me MSFT pulled back on that.
An outfit that can make pivot-tables an intuitive push-button affair and give users massive database size capacity would have a shot at the power users but for the workaday PC users, Excel is actually useful. Amazing that MSFT developed it.
I think the sharks are circling.
Plus MS-Works and MS-Office is bundled with just about every PC sold, so it is practically free anyway.
I am downloading Lotus Symphony for Windows and Linux, but even though I have high speed broadband it is very slow. The download manager IBM uses crashed my web browser and I tried Firefox 2.0.0.7 and IE 7.0 but I was forced to do the HTTP download. No option for BitTorrent downloads either. IBM has such poor quality control these days that even their web technology is messed up. Since it is based on Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino, you know that IBM messed them up after buying out Lotus. IBM tech support is horrible as well.
Lotus Symphony may be a dog for IBM, I think they should just make some of the Lotus source code and file formats available to improve OpenOffice.Org and not even bother with Lotus Symphony.
First: One ISO Right Cross To The Head.
Second: One EU Court of First Instance Left Upper-Cut To The Jaw.
and
Third: One IBM Jab To The Mid-Section
One awaits to see how much of Redmond's blood has really been spilled before Redmond goes to the next "Round" with the ISO! Are there any bets!
As for IBM and OpenOffice, read the news release and see what IBM is doing and contributing. They are donating, money, programmers and some of the code they developed for Symphony that was not in OpenOffice. The consensus seems to be that OpenOffice will get better even faster. If there is a downside, it may be to OxygenFree Office that is the offshoot of OpenOffice modded to be more business focused than the generic OpenOffice.
I do not thing it is OpenOffice vs Symphony vs Google vs StarOffice (Sun's version) but all of them are more common than different and collaborating to reach somewhat different markets. If all of the 128,000,000 Notes users upgrade to Notes 8 and phased out or required odf formats it will hurt MS.
I now do not accept MS format from my clients in the office. I started this some time ago and back then required and accepted only rtf and 1-2-3 file formats. When I switched to odf, I found little resistance with my clients. Some updated by simply downloading OpenOffice and use it for a file converter but more and more are electing to use it. I client has converted all of its office to it, in excess of 80 persons. It turned out more than 2/3rds had it at home either on their person computers or their kids so they were used to it.
- Watch Out Cisco, HP, Dell etc. Geekware is here
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by b.k.m
September 20, 2007 10:21 AM PDT
- Yeah... and companies are going to stop buying Cisco network equipment because Netgear is so much cheaper. Watch out Cisco. HP better plan an exit for it's printer business because large corporations everywhere are going digital! The end is near for HP's cash cow. Dell better rethink its strategy too because corporations are going to realize what consumers have known for a long time - generic clones like eMachines are cheaper. In fact, now everybody is listening to the nerdy IT guy who runs Linux on his homebuilt -- because all along he's had all the strategies to save tons of money.
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