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According to Gartner, IBM’s gamble with Symphony launch might not just be of any significance to people. It says, " However, Symphony provides few advantages over existing OpenOffice.org distributions.”

On 18 September 2007, IBM announced IBM Lotus Symphony, a suite of free software tools including Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations. It supports Windows and Linux desktops as well as multiple file formats, including Microsoft Office and Open Document Format. It can also output content in Portable Document Format (PDF). The stand-alone Symphony applications are identical to the productivity applets bundled in Notes 8. Lotus Symphony is available and can be downloaded online.

Gartner said, IBM has made a bold move into a market dominated by Microsoft. However, the Symphony release is not as significant as it may seem. Symphony is an IBM distribution of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications from the OpenOffice.org suite of productivity applications, much like the StarOffice suite available from Sun that is distributed by Google. StarOffice and OpenOffice have been available for many years; they have additional database and MS Office macro conversion, drawing and calculator modules not included in Symphony. Differences in the IBM offering include support, Section 508-compliant accessibility, a different user interface and the Eclipse development platform framework.

Gartner said Organisations have not widely implemented OpenOffice because their versions of Microsoft Office are still supported. Also, compatibility is not perfect, requiring some users to run Microsoft Office. Organisations need to classify users to decide who can use OpenOffice and who needs Microsoft Office — something they don't like to do, partly because OpenOffice does not offer significant functions that cannot be performed in Microsoft Office.

Some users will appreciate the backing from IBM, and shortfalls in accessibility in other OpenOffice distributions have hampered its adoption in some government agencies. Nonetheless, the Eclipse framework will not carry much weight in attracting organisations that are not IBM-centric.

Meanwhile, competitors are not standing still. “In the long term, we believe Web 2.0 applications that provide easier deployment and real-time collaboration could be more of a threat to Microsoft Office,” Gartner said.

In fact sometime back Google had launched its version the office document. Google and IBM have announced that they are intensifying efforts to challenge Microsoft's dominant Office suite. IBM has announced the release of Lotus Symphony, a portfolio of free software tools for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

Made up of Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations, the tools support Windows and Linux desktops and are designed to handle the majority of office tasks that workers typically perform.

Lotus Symphony also supports multiple file formats including Microsoft Office and ODF (Open Document Format), and can also output content in the popular PDF format.

"IBM is committed to opening office desktop productivity applications just as we helped open enterprise computing with Linux," Steve Mills, senior vice president of IBM Software Group, said.

"The lifeblood of any organisation 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," he said. "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."

Google too has launched a new presentation feature for its popular Google Docs applications suite. The product will compete with Microsoft's Power Point and the new feature allows presentations to be edited collaboratively in real time.


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