Technology giant IBM has announced a plan
to help cost-conscious businesses save money on software licensing costs for
Microsoft Office by providing support for Microsoft Office 2007 with the newest
version of Lotus Symphony, IBM's free
productivity software suite.
The ability to import Microsoft Office 2007 files into Symphony means that
Microsoft Office customers can save on licensing costs by switching to Symphony
while retaining access to the contents of their Office files. Lotus Symphony Version
1.3 is now available free on IBM’s Website.
IBM said its alternative to Office 2007
makes cost-free document software a legitimate option for many companies that
want to realize cost efficiencies in the current economic climate, but also
require assurance of the quality and reliability of the technology.
In addition to adding support for Microsoft Office 2007 file formats, Lotus
Symphony 1.3 offers DataPilot Table improvements, enhances mail merge and
envelope printing, and provides animation to enhance presentations and
interoperate with Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. The updated version of
Symphony allows users to drag and drop plug-ins, such as a learning plug-in
that can be installed on the right sidebar to help users learn Symphony
capabilities. Symphony is shipped with every copy of Lotus Notes and Lotus
Foundations software.
"IBM is delivering on its commitment to
free businesses and consumers from having to pay licensing fees over and over
just to access their own personal or company information," said Lotus
Software’s Vice President Kevin Cavanaugh. "Now, it will be much harder to
justify paying Office licensing fees when you can preserve and access your
Office documents for free using Lotus Symphony."
Reducing fixed costs in challenging times is important to Cluttons, a
partnership of chartered surveyors. Through a network of offices in the U.K.,
Europe, Middle East and South
Africa, Cluttons offers a wide range of
professional property management, agency and consultancy services across the
commercial and residential sectors.
In recent years, Cluttons delivered Microsoft Windows desktop, including
Microsoft Office, IBM Lotus Notes and
business applications, to its users via a virtualized environment based on
Citrix. Now it plans to switch from Office to Symphony, used with Lotus Notes
8.5. Mark Clemence, Cluttons’ IT director, said the opportunity to use fully
supported office productivity tools as part of the deployment of Lotus Notes
8.5 was too good to be missed. “We plan to use the cost saving to further
invest in Lotus productivity tool sets," he said.
IBM also touted Italian food distributor
Gruppo Amadori, which recently began converting its 6,000 employees to Symphony
on Linux desktops from an Office and Windows environment as part of a
cost-control strategy. The IBM Linux desktop
includes Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime and Lotus Quickr, in addition to Symphony.
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