Microsoft Office is under attack on all sides this week.
IBM made available today for free its Symphony suite of office applications - taking square aim at Microsoft Office, the Wall Street Journal reports. Symphony includes a word processor, spreadsheet and business presentation software. Symphony will also be bundled with new versions of Notes. Symphony is based on Open Office.
Meanwhile, Google also announced that it was adding a PowerPoint rival to its SaaS office suite. This fills the only hole Google had when competing with Microsoft Office/Outlook/Exchange as collaboration/business productivity suite.
Then Yahoo jumped into the game, too. It bought open-source collaboration software vendor Zimbra. Zimba's flagship product, Collaboration Suite, includes a back-end server and a browser-based Ajax client that offers e-mail, contacts, calendar, VoIP and a text editor. It also develops software called Zimlets, which are small applications that provide integration of e-mail with third-party data sources.
Now, add to this the fact that Microsoft's hands are being tied (or at least, the attempt is being made to tie its hands) by continued antitrust maneuvers. With the EU's ruling this week and the California group (a group of states) push for antitrust oversight, Microsoft is going to need to come up with something other than its classic competitive move - bundling its technology into its OS.
All of this, though, is good for Microsoft, a big, strong, often smart company. People have been angered to the point of extremes over some of Microsoft's business practices. More competition could force it to quit the hardball tactics and really compete on innovation, quality, fair pricing and the like.
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To be honest, I am a serious
To be honest, I am a serious open office fan and have been using it for several years now. I honestly just wish Lotus and Open Office would not be used in the same story. I'm interested and have moderate expectations, but will proceed cautiously in our testing. Dare I also say Google?
Symphony revisited
I guess no one involved with this product has been around long enough to remember that Lotus had an office suite called Symphony back in the mid 80's.
Symphony
I am think they are perfectly aware of the history of the Symphony name and that that is why it was chosen.
Project has rival with Projity's OpenProj
It is great news that IBM has joined Sun in offering an alternative to Microsoft Office. Projity open sourced OpenProj which is a complete replacement of $1,000 priced Microsoft Project. OpenProj is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows and is free. OpenProj even opens native Microsoft Project files so why ever buy Project again ? It is a nice complement to the IBM, Sun and Google offerings. Look out Microsoft
IBM offers office suite for free, others also attack
Yawn .... IBM hasn't been a software company since the '80's.