Office software suite for IBM's customers

In just the first week of its release, IBM Symphony - the rival of the Microsoft Office Office suite, has been downloaded over 100,000 times.

" To be honest, we were surprised at how fast users were embracing it, " said Mike Rhodin, IBM General Manager of Collaboration and Lotus Software.

To meet the demand for Symphony, IBM had to triple the number of download servers available in the first few days. To download Symphony to your computer, users must first register with the company (via the Website) to have access ID and password.

Using these data, they will download the first beta of Symphony, a free office software package developed by IBM. However, many people complained that the process was too "troublesome", so IBM adjusted and the only condition to download Symphony is now " A valid email address" only. .

Symphony is based on OpenOffice.org and Eclipse framework. Its goal is not only to give individual and business users an alternative to Microsoft Office, but also to promote "Open Document for XML", an XML standard for open source documents. get ISO certificate.

Cooperation

For comparison, Microsoft Office 2007 does not support ODF but only uses the Open XML format developed by Microsoft. Unfortunately, this standard is "dropped" in the recent ISO voting round.

Microsoft is at the same time "fighting" with three major rivals, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Google, when all three giants are based on the ODF standard to launch free and open source office applications.

They hope that more and more users will opt for ODF software that shuns Microsoft, thereby limiting the stagnation of the Redmond Giant in the office of application.

Before IBM, both Sun Microsystems StarOffice and Google Apps were not successful in taking down Microsoft Office.

But based on the magnificent size, stature and history of IBM in the software industry, analysts believe that IBM has a greater chance, especially when Symphony is receiving very positive feedback from people. use.

" IBM is a giant king-kong in the enterprise software market and is Microsoft's main rival, " said IDC analyst Melissa Webster.

IBM plans to release the second beta of Symphony in the next 6-8 weeks, while the final version will be released widely in early 2008.

Trong Cam