Office productivity moving online, market suddenly hot

Microsoft Corp. announced Monday its Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a web based extension of Microsoft Office that that allows users to access their documents online and share their work with others including those who do not run Microsoft Office on the desktop.

The beta version of this service, which went online today, allows users to collaborate and comment on documents online, but requires Microsoft Office to run on the desktop if the document has to be edited.

Microsoft has only put a part of its Office suite online, to protect its business of selling software licenses to Office on the desktop. The company is pitching for a combination “software and service” model for the delivery of software in contrast to competitor Google Inc., which offers online office productivity software like a spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation software.

Adobe Systems Inc. is also moving towards an online model. It also announced Monday that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a company in Waltham, Massachusetts called Virtual Ubiquity and its online word processor,Buzzword, which was built with Adobe Flex software and runs in the Adobe Flash Player.

Microsoft’s move to help its customers access their files on the web from wherever they are, may hence be seen as a nice new feature, but not a dramatic change in business model. A lot of customers in fact favor this dual model, and there have been hints that Google too may offer a desktop version of its office productivity software.

All of a sudden, office productivity, is seeing fierce competition. It seemed like that market had been won and conceded to Microsoft with folks like OpenOffice and StarOffice putting up token resistance.

IBM Corp. launched last month Lotus Symphony, an office productivity suite based on open-source OpenOffice.org and Eclipse. The company had 100,000 downloads of the software in the first week it was offered. Analysts like Gartner Inc. say that IBM’s Symphony is just a makeover of OpenOffice which was already available for free download or through Sun Microsystems Inc. as StarOffice. Because of remaining compatibility issues, user organizations have to still run Microsoft Office once they start using OpenOffice, according to Gartner.

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IBM has 100,000 downloads of Lotus Symphony, but too early to call

IBM has 100,000 downloads of Lotus Symphony, but too early to call

IBM Corp. has reported 100,000 downloads in one week of the beta version of Lotus Symphony, its free office suite, which is seen as a potential competitor to Microsoft Corp’s Office suite.

Symphony is based on the open source OpenOffice.org and Eclipse framework, and promotes the ODF for XML (Open Document Format), which is an XML standard approved by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) in Geneva. Microsoft’s Office suite supports Open XML, which failed to get fast-track approval as an ISO standard earlier this month.

Research firm Gartner Inc. however said in a research note that 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 Microsystems Inc., and also distributed by Google, it pointed out.

As pointed out in a posting in this blog on September 17, despite IBM’s marketing muscle and a large customer base, the move by IBM may not really cut into Microsoft’s business. OpenOffice has been around free for many years, but its adoption has not been dramatic so far, and comes mainly from open-source die-hards.

Organizations have not widely implemented OpenOffice because their versions of Microsoft Office are still supported (Microsoft supports office versions for 10 years). Also, compatibility is not perfect, requiring some users to run Microsoft Office, Gartner said.

Competition is also coming to IBM and Microsoft from online hosted office applications from companies like Google Inc. Google has hinted at offering both online and offline versions of its software.

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IBM to counter Microsoft Office, but without a compelling strategy

IBM to counter Microsoft Office, but without a compelling strategy

IBM Corp. will be offering online office productivity applications such as a word processor, spread sheet, and business presentation software, according to various reports.

The package, called Lotus Symphony, will be offered free to download to users, starting Tuesday, said The New York Times.

By this move IBM will once again be competing with Microsoft Corp. in the office applications space.

Google Inc. is also offering a software suite including word processing, spreadsheet and calendar management programs. The company is adding soon a business presentation program to compete with Microsoft’s PowerPoint. However the software and the data generated by users on this software remains online.

The software offered by IBM will be open source software from OpenOffice.org, according to the reports.

Despite IBM’s marketing muscle and a large customer base, the move by IBM may not really cut into Microsoft’s business. OpenOffice has been around free for many years, but its adoption has not been dramatic so far, and comes mainly from open-source die-hards.

Microsoft, planning to stay with its software license revenue model, has pushed a “ software and service” model that requires users to still buy Microsoft Office software and install it on their machines. Microsoft’s Office Live provides online extensions to the software.

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