IBM's announcement of Lotus Symphony yesterday gave me a wicked '80s flashback. In my mind's eye I saw the original Lotus Symphony office suite, flickering on an amber monochrome monitor, boring me to tears as a New Order dance track thumped in the background.
The new Symphony comes with a different soundtrack: the drumbeat of challengers marching on Microsoft Office. The Symphony suite unveiled by IBM yesterday as a free download is actually a gussied-up version of OpenOffice, the open source productivity suite –- kinda like Sun's StarOffice, now offered for free as part of Google Pack. Could it be a coincidence that on the same day Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked up the forthcoming presentation component of Google Docs?
Yet in Redmond the guns remain eerily silent, to the point where I'm beginning to wonder if Microsoft isn't up to something. Ask the company, and all you get is the usual defensive posturing. Yesterday I spoke with Jacob Jaffe, Director, Microsoft Office, who –- surprise! –- claimed the recent surge of competitive activity doesn't bother Microsoft at all. Not one bit! Customer satisfaction is booming. The company sold more than 71 million licenses in the last fiscal year, for heaven's sake.
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