Monday, 24 September 2007

IBM, Google Strike Back At Microsoft

A few days after the European Union asked Microsoft to share some of its details with rivals, two of its fiercest rivals Google and IBM have come together to offer Office suite...

A few days after the European Union asked Microsoft to share some of its details with rivals, two of its fiercest rivals Google and IBM have come together to offer Office suite.

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.