At a time when Microsoft Office is facing some competition from online office suites, IBM has released IBM Symphony, based on Open Office – it’s is a free desktop software that will compete with Star Office of Sun and Microsoft Office.
IBM will make money from Symphony Office Suite through support. The suite has Word Processor, Spreadsheet and a Presentation app.
WSJ – IBM’s latest move is aimed chiefly at boosting its Notes software, which includes email and instant messaging, as a rival to Microsoft’s Outlook email software. By introducing Symphony in an internationally recognized information-display standard called the Open Document Format, IBM also hopes to boost acceptance of that standard, which doesn’t work well with Microsoft products. Link.