IBM Tries To One-Up MIcrosoft With Free Office Productivity Software

Athens, GA (Sept 18, 2007) - The war between IBM. Microsoft and Google for control of the user desktop is escalating. Last week, Microsoft made a bold move in reducing the academic pricing of the full version of Microsoft Office to US$60 for students. It could be that this may have actually been a preemptive move. At the IBM Lotus Collaboration Summit in New York City today, IBM announced the immediate availability of Lotus Symphony. Unlike the old Lotus spreadsheet product of the same name, this product is a comprehensive suite of free software tools for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Already embedded in the recently launched release of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8,  Lotus Symphony includes  three core tools: Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations. According to IBM, "these software tools are intuitive to use, support Windows and Linux  Desktops and are designed to handle the majority of office productivity tasks that workers typically perform. Lotus Symphony supports multiple file formats including Microsoft Office and Open Document Format (ODF), and also can output content in PDF format."

In a press release from IBM, IBM Software Group senior vice president Steve Mills says, "IBM is committed to opening office desktop productivity applications just as we helped open enterprise computing with Linux. "The lifeblood of any organization is contained in thousands of documents. When those documents are based on proprietary software, only future versions of the same software will be able to access that intelligence. This dynamic forces companies to keep paying license and maintenance fees to the same vendor for a basic commodity. Now businesses can unlock their critical office information free of the costs  and controls of any vendor."

This statement can be seen as a clear message to Microsoft and their efforts to have OOXML declared an ISO standard. IBM has been opposed to this and has been clearly behind efforts to have Open Document Format selected as the standard. The battle turned uglier recently when it was revealed that Microsoft had compensated business partners in Sweden to show up at the last minute to the Swedish governing body's decision meeting and vote in favor of the OOXML standard. Despite the fact that this tactic turned the vote in the favor of Microsoft, Sweden had to reverse its decision and elect to abstain from that portion of the internional vote on

On his blog, IBM executive Ed Brill writes that "I'm excited about this announcement on many levels.  First, it shows the strategic nature, based on current and future plans, of IBM's investment in delivering the editors in Notes 8 as well as through other channels. Second, it offers something from the Lotus brand focused on the end-user/consumer. Third, it demonstrates the strength of IBM's commitment behind desktop alternatives (Linux, ODF, etc) to the broader market -- which should help with all distributions of OpenOffice.org-based editor tools, today and tomorrow."

IBM may have issues getting deep penetration with this product offering. The first challenge is that any macro scripts written for Microsoft Office products cannot be imported. Likewise, any macros scripts written in Symphony cannot be exported either. For many organizations, there may also be the issue of how updated  their desktops are. Because Symphony is based on the Eclipse platform, so users will have to have 1 GB of RAM available to run the software. According to one IT Manager of a retail corporation in the Northeast, "Most of our computers in the field do not even come close to that."

IBM is hopeful that that these limitations are offset by the other benefits provided by the software offering.  Adopting the Google model of offering beta software free to the consumer market will be a test of product acceptance. It also gives IBM to the opportunity to decide if they move the offering out of beta down the road.