IBM has announced the launch of a free Microsoft Office competitor: Lotus Symphony, at the same time Google launched its final product in the triple play office suite Presently.
According to the New York Times, IBM Lotus Symphony includes word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.
Lotus Symphony, like Sun Star Office is based on the Open Office code base.
Melissa Webster, an analyst for IDC said that “I.B.M. is jumping in with products that are backed by I.B.M., with the I.B.M. brand and I.B.M. service…a major boost for open source on the desktop.”
I.B.M. is said to view its Symphony desktop offerings as part of a broader technology trend that according to the NY Times “will open the door to faster, more automated movement of information within and between organizations…a crucial technical ingredient, they say, is the document format used in the open-source desktop software, called the OpenDocument Format. It makes digital information independent of the program, like a word processor or spreadsheet, that is used to create and edit a document.”
The office suite sector continues to be interesting.
Duncan my man – you have gotta be taking speed or something! 14 Posts in 1 day and Techcrunch40 Coverage….WHOAAAAAAA!
The more companies to compete for the online office apps market, the better for us end-users.
do u mind not posting links back to techcrunch… just redirect it to that URL… e.g. wherever presently is hosted…
Star Office is the basis of OpenOffice.org not the other way around
This step ill move the major companies to go further and competition is always good to the end user.
OK, maybe I’m just getting too old, but couldn’t IBM think up a better name? Lotus Symphony brings back memories for me of a huge failure to compete with Microsoft in the mid-80’s.
So after Google and Yahoo(Zimbra), its time for IBM to enter the space…
Smart move IBM. Give it away for free and the charge for updates and add ons. To gain profits you have to give it away for free initially.
This is just great. I am no longer tied to MS products other than the OS. I feel liberated.
I have been testing these products for a while on my Lotus Notes 8(currently at GA) and to be honest they still have a long way to go when compared with Office 07. I have a ton of reasons as to why, but if anyone has used it for over a month would know what I am talking about.
Disclaimer: I am not a MSFT fan boy, in fact I work for IBM
@ 10
Your disclaimer doesn’t mean anything when your name is ‘anonymous’ and we actually have no way of knowing who you are
This is good news. Now if I was yahoo, I would try to buy something like Zoho.
@8. Smart move? IBM has no choice.
Their office suits are failed, now trying to play politics with ODF and open source. Good product win, not politic. Value creation win, not value destruction. Bob Suitor may be mastered in destroying value but not be able to create it.
I hope IBM doesn’t fail too badly. As for the rest, how will IBM be making money from this? Huge enterprise-wide collaboration opportunities or will there be a mark-up or what’s the deal? Why would IBM try to enter into the open source docs space now rather than way back when Google Apps started up with their Docs and Spreadsheets??
Anyone got a URL for download yet. This is great news. Now we not only have a choice–but we have a FREE choice.
-Jacob Roecker
http://www.trailbrain.com
This is good news. There are so many choices now I see little reason to buy office. Office is still the best out of all them, but best doesn’t trump FREE. And these free versions will get better and better.
I already know a lot of people using google docs or open office cause they don’t want to dish out cash for ms office.
I think microsoft should worry. Their entire office revenue will crater in the next 3-5 years.
I agree with Eric. Anybody who remembers Lotus Symphony (feels like it was yesterday..can’t believe its been 20 yrs!) might associate the new product with the one from the mid-80s. They should have definitely renamed the product.
I love this kind of competition! Everyone is coming up with new FREE products to take away M$ market share. I am starting to feel sorry for M$.
Remember the old Lotus apps? Still use the organizer, and Wordpro – they’re perfect for my needs! Only time I use MSoffice products is when entering companies where most of the employees need tech support to turn on a pc! IBM slightly shot themselves in the foot by not continuing the development and free distribution earlier.
Next : IBM brings back OS2 !!
This is corporate glue-sniffing! What planet do IBM think they are on??