Lotus Symphony – Is Microsoft Worried

Big announcement from IBM that they’ve now launched a free version of an office productivity suite named Lotus Symphony. Symphony is based on OpenOffice.org and the Open Document format.

David Berlind reports that Microsoft quickly followed up IBM’s announcement with alerts to various news outlets to give them a chance to hear Microsoft’s version of the statement.

Customers continue to tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that they need. This is validated by the strong adoption and usage seen by Microsoft Office having sold more than 71 million licenses in just the last Microsoft fiscal year. Our long history in meeting the complex needs of enterprise customers, a partner ecosystem that has grown 43% on the Office platform since last year and our current and future investments in the software + services arena will deliver even more flexibility to customers.

Berlind states that we really can’t take Microsoft at its word and actually believe they’ve sold 71 million licenses. He says some of those copies were upgrades, some were sold to developing countries at cut-throat prices and some were included with the purchase of new computers.

Not sure what the problem was, Microsoft didn’t state they sold all 71 million copies at the full price. They were all sold though through some means or another. The fact is there’s 71 million copies of the software application currently in the market. In my mind it’s no more misleading than an automobile manufacturer stating they’re the #1 selling car in the market, yet failed to mention they sold a third of their inventory through government contracts, commercial contracts or directly to rental car companies. Is it any less of a sale? No. Is it slightly misleading, maybe. If I like the car did it really make me purchase the software against my will? NO!

I’ve downloaded and installed OpenOffice on a variety of people’s computers and they seem to regularly run into file compatibility problems or other issues of something they could do in Microsoft Word for example, but now can’t figure out or do.

I don’t think Microsoft needs to be worried about these things taking over their business, but it should be a wake-up call that need to start really working on the features, functionality and user-friendliness of their applications.

Personally, I’ve used Lotus Notes and I can tell you right now; I don’t care what Lotus would develop I’m not interested in using it.