Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

IBM's attacks Microsoft with an OpenOffice symphony

By Dan Farber | September 18, 2007, 7:50am PDT

It’s like a deja vu all over again, a battle of two major forces played over and over. Once again IBM is making an attempt to take down Microsoft, this time the lucrative Office franchise. Reusing an old IBM/Lotus name, Lotus Symphony is likely to meet the same fate as the ill-fated OS/2 and Lotus SmartSuite, the operating system IBM and productivity suite created in the 1990’s to topple Windows.

This time IBM is going the open source route, with a freely downloadable version of OpenOffice.org, joining Google in promoting the client-based productivity suite, which came out of Sun. IBM is even dedicating engineers to working on the OpenOffice project.

However, IBM isn’t offering a freely downloadable communication suite, with email, calendar, instant messaging and other collaboration features as part of its symphony–at least not yet.

IBM thinks that it can do for OpenOffice what it did for Linux, in terms of sales, service and support efforts. It can also make money on the freely downloadable software selling consulting and support contracts to large corporations.

IBM, Sun, Google and other also want to make OpenDocument Format (ODF) that Symphony uses a standard document format, versus Microsoft’s Office Open XML, which the International Organization for Standardization in Europe rejected as a standard.

After a decade, OpenOffice is a blip on Microsoft’s screen. It could take another decade for IBM to make inroads with Symphony, especially given it doesn’t have a cloud-based version yet. Nor is Microsoft standing still, and Google also seems to be interested in this space, with online collaboration at its core. Even Yahoo has raised its hand with its aquisition of Zimbra, and Zoho and ThinkFree will eventually get scooped up by a bigger player.

Even Larry Dignan is jumping into the fray:

Without further ado, I introduce DigOffice, a new paradigm in productivity software. It’ll be SAASy, on-demand, comply with all those document formats everyone gripes about. You’ll dig DigOffice so much that you’ll drop Microsoft Office, fire your CIO for being so stupid and embrace an open source, browser-centric productivity reality. Of course, DigOffice will have so much AJAX that you can clean your kitchen sink. And it’ll all work offline.

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Stick to politics

Maybe IBM ought to stick to using politics to take down MS. It is the only thing that seems to work for them. And maybe MS will realize that it has no choice but to build up a political machinery second to none, to continually blunt and assault its competitors.
P. Douglas
18th Sep 2007
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Politics

Do you really believe that Microsoft's ownership of the DOJ indicates a lack of political clout?
Update victim
20th Sep 2007
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Thanks for the link...

I was on their site this morning and couldn't find it anywhere.
BillyG_n_SC
18th Sep 2007
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Link worked for me

Link worked for me. However, I'm not too crazy about the fact that I have to go through registration hurdles to get this, unlike Open Office. They want every bit of information including who I work for, mailing address, phone numbers, etc. Sheesh.

Is it truly "freely available" when you have to fork over all your information?
yyuko@...
18th Sep 2007
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Think Stratetic -- IBM does

After a decade, OpenOffice is a blip on Microsoft???s screen.

If so, the radar is broken. Seven to twenty percent penetration should have their attention. Waiting until it hits fifty would be stupid. They're not stupid.

Want proof? DIS-29500 is a panic reaction to the strategic threat.

Don't be misled by "market share," since that's a dollar amount, which obviously weights in favor of the most expensive product on the market.

It could take another decade for IBM to make inroads with Symphony, especially given it doesn???t have a cloud-based version yet.

IBM plans in the long term. Microsoft is like the Black Hole of IT: margin gets sucked into the Redmond event horizon never to return. IBM has watched it happen from the beginning, and knows what the ultimate outcome will be if they don't take preventive steps.

The issue isn't whether this will ultimately turn into a major revenue source for IBM; it's whether it will make a net contribution to the bottom line. That contribution may well be due to preserving IBM Global Services' existing business from being eaten by MS-only initiatives run directly from Redmond.
Yagotta B. Kidding
18th Sep 2007
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"IBM plans in the long term."

True. I've been pretty miffed over the last few years at IBM's failure to market Notes better or articulate a long-term plan.

Well, I'm still miffed, but for their failure to communicate rather than a failure to perform. When they finally opened the floodgates, it was a torrent. Notes transformed onto the Eclipse. Expeditor. DB2. Java-based and complete with Linux clients.

On the same day of the Symphony announcement people are already deriding it as being incomplete without email and scheduling. They're missing the point, I think. Email, scheduling, collaboration are all built into Lotus Notes 8, and SameTime integrates to make it real-time. All of the Symphony tools are built directly into Notes, so this isn't targeting corporate customers directly: they don't need it. For a little over 100 bucks a seat they get email AND collaboration AND database with years and years of compatible application templates AND a standards-compliant office suite.

But to get people onto ODF at work you need them to be able to work home too, without having to pay extra for that. YES, you could edit the docs with OpenOffice.org, but for a lot of people branding matters. And so does the UI... Symphony has the same interface as Lotus Notes 8.

Oh, yeah, and you can get it on your choice of platform, so it's possible to put low-cost Linux desktops on your company's roadmap and not worry about whether the company's apps will migrate. And if you look at what's coming, they're taking it mobile, too. Take a look at Lotus Expeditor.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/expeditor/

It is a long-term plan, and it looks to be a damned good one.
dave.leigh@...
18th Sep 2007
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Citrix and OS/2

First lets remember that OS/2 was a Microsoft Windows operating system product. I get so frustrated with authors that neglect that most important fact. Then lets note that Citrix is a company formed by the OS/2 developers and then lets add to our knowledge by pointing out how Citrix is saving Microsoft Office 2007/ Vista.

Then lets back up to the Patty Dunn identity thefts. This involved Zdnet/Cnet reporters. In any case the theft caused congressional testimony to be given regarding a three-way-back-room secrete deal where HP was to get special pricing for Itanium processors and Microsoft was to get a platform that Microsoft SQL Server would better IBM's DB2 and Oracle 9i on. The testimony resulted in the removal of virtually all who worked on the project from all three companies and the mysterious disappearance of a Microsoft database scientist who was lost at sea. The Itanium is now known as Titaium as in Titanic + Itanium and only the most shielded workers in our industry do not know this story by now.

But there is more. Vista and Office 2007 was developed with Itanium in mind. It is for this reason that Vista and Office 2007 do not benchmark well against software developed with Java on the newer PCS. Java was created with multicore multiprocesors in mind. Hence programs written in Java naturally take advantage of threading to use the multiplicity of these processors. Vista and Office were meant for singleton processors. They still need to be rewritten to match the realities of todays computing devices.

And now for the rest of the story. If you put Vista and Office 2007 "in the cloud", you can run it on very fast Itanium like 64 bit servers. It no longer appears slow. Hence Citrix saves Vista and OS/2.
mighetto
18th Sep 2007
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Good one!

I run my multi-threaded Excel calculations every day (which other spreasheet app does this, again?), and Vista's multi-threaded model was in place a decade ago back in the Win2000 time frame. You can take a look at the high-end database transaction results on 32+ processors if you're actually interested, since that model's been shipping for a LONG time now. (Or just run the beta of Win2008 Server.)

I'm also curious which office suite benchmarks show Office 2007 (or any other version) running poorly against java-based suites.

But, an excellent piece of reading none the less, we all need a bit of levity from time to time! Let us know if you find another spreadsheet app that calculates on all pocessor cores to surpass Excel's performance, by all means!
KTLA
18th Sep 2007
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sorry, but collarotation and ownership are NOT the same

OS/2 was a joint project of IBM and Microsoft with IBM working on the kernal and Microsoft working on the GUI. Microsoft bailed out when IBM would not incorporate the GUI into the kernal for stability reasons. The early versions of OS/2 and Windows OS/2/NT, which is what Microsoft called their version, were able to run each other's applications.

Microsoft dumped the vastly superior High Performance File system to create incompatibilities with IBM and kill this interoperability, but they kept the GUI in the kernal and they kept the resulting "Blue Screen of Death".
Update victim
20th Sep 2007
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Sorry about that "collarotation", should be "collaboration"

.
Update victim
20th Sep 2007
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ZDNet Moderator

Message has been deleted.
David Grober
18th Sep 2007
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Is there nobody immune?

I guess you offended some one.
nucrash
18th Sep 2007
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RE: IBM's attacks Microsoft with an OpenOffice symphony

An obvious lack of impartiality, and facts, with regard to the 'reporting' here.... take the phrase;-

"want to make OpenDocument Format (ODF) that Symphony uses a standard document format, versus Microsoft???s Office Open XML, which the International Organization for Standardization in Europe rejected as a standard."

(1) There is no "wanting". ODF is THE only internationally recognized document standard.

(2) The ISO is an international standards body with member countries from every geographical region; - yes even the USA. Its not some nefarious European conspiracy to attack anything produced by America/Microsoft. So why try and introduce xenophobia into your piece?

It begins to look like ZDNET is run from Redmond's PR Dept.
sj_z
19th Sep 2007
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your point

Good point on ISO regarding ODF....now ODF needs to be adopted by users. ....as far as your comment about ZDNet and Redmond...we are used to people making those kinds of unsupported claims...
dbfarber
19th Sep 2007
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Dear Dan,

When the mistakes in fact in your articles stop appearing to only support Redmond, you will probably stop seeing the attacks.
Update victim
20th Sep 2007
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