On Sundays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest stories during the week.
This week, I chose to feature the announcement by IBM that effective immediately, the IBM Lotus Symphony Office Suite would be available free of charge for personal and corporate use. It consists of a first-rate word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation producer, It does not, however, contain a productivity/email application equivalent to Outlook. This is a watershed event in the Office Suite wars.
In a bold swipe at Microsoft’s share of the office (both the office as in location and Office as in program) software market, IBM today announced the newest version of its Lotus Symphony could fully support any files from Office 2007. The kicker: Lotus Symphony is a free business productivity software suite. In this economy, companies looking to shave pennies anywhere and everywhere might look closer than usual at freeware, especially freeware developed and supported by IBM. The latest version of Symphony now supports Office 2007 file types (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, and the like), so any company that’s used Microsoft in the past would retain access to all their old files, which IBM is pushing as a major selling point.
If you are not familiar with Lotus Symphony, it is no slouch at all in this space. In fact, Channel Web.com awarded them the Best Desktop Application of 2008 award!
I have always been a big fan of competition. I believe that innovation is driven by competition. In the office suite space, there has simply not been enough for the past few years and we have all suffered for it. While I have often used Open Office, and it is more than competent, it lacks the big ticket backing of a Microsoft or IBM to add legitimacy. The fact that Lotus Symphony is now fully compatible with both the open source Open Office document formats and the Microsoft proprietary ones automatically propels it to the top of my radar, I will let you all know how I find it in a review in the future. For now, though, I think that the message is competition is back, there is a real low-cost option for office productivity, and we all need to keep our eyes on this software space.
What do you think? Is there room in this segment for competition? Have you used Lotus Symphony or Open Office before?
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for June 21, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .
Image Credit: HotHardware,com
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News Commentary: New Option in Desktop Office Suites
On Sundays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week. Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest stories during the week.
This week, I chose to feature the announcement by IBM that effective immediately, the IBM Lotus Symphony Office Suite would be available free of charge for personal and corporate use. It consists of a first-rate word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation producer, It does not, however, contain a productivity/email application equivalent to Outlook. This is a watershed event in the Office Suite wars.
HotHardware.com: IBM takes a swipe at Microsoft Office’s market
If you are not familiar with Lotus Symphony, it is no slouch at all in this space. In fact, Channel Web.com awarded them the Best Desktop Application of 2008 award!
I have always been a big fan of competition. I believe that innovation is driven by competition. In the office suite space, there has simply not been enough for the past few years and we have all suffered for it. While I have often used Open Office, and it is more than competent, it lacks the big ticket backing of a Microsoft or IBM to add legitimacy. The fact that Lotus Symphony is now fully compatible with both the open source Open Office document formats and the Microsoft proprietary ones automatically propels it to the top of my radar, I will let you all know how I find it in a review in the future. For now, though, I think that the message is competition is back, there is a real low-cost option for office productivity, and we all need to keep our eyes on this software space.
What do you think? Is there room in this segment for competition? Have you used Lotus Symphony or Open Office before?
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for June 21, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .
Image Credit: HotHardware,com
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
This entry was posted by Scott Coughlin on June 21, 2009 at 6:02 am, and is filed under Information Technology, News Commentary. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.