IBM releases Lotus Symphony and Foundations Start in an effort to pry SMB market share from Microsoft's grasp.IBM's Lotus
Symphony software is ready for prime time, as the company moved the free
collaboration suite out of beta and put it in front of the public June 3.
The software, which supports the ODF (Open Document Format), is designed as a
free alternative to Microsoft's Office suite and includes word processing,
spreadsheet and presentation applications.
"A growing number of businesses are considering decisions to renew their
Office licensing agreements, and move up to Office 2007 and Vista,"
IBM said in a statement. "Lotus Symphony 1.0
provides a timely and cost-effective alternative tested by nearly 1 million
people worldwide and assured backed by IBM."
The lack of cost also puts Lotus Symphony in competition with the free Google Apps, which include hosted
word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. Meanwhile, Adobe unveiled Acrobat.com June 2 as yet another hosted
productivity and collaboration suite.
Symphony is still free in its official incarnation, but IBM,
as is its wont, is also providing fee-based services to support this suite in
larger organizations.
Priced at $25 per user for 1,000 employees, IBM
Elite Support for Lotus Symphony 1.0 provides unlimited remote technical
support via an annual subscription to IBM's
Passport Advantage or Passport Advantage Express volume licensing programs.
To grease the wheels and get Symphony out to as many users as possible, IBM
June 2 also officially launched Lotus
Foundations Start, the company's first collaboration server for small and
midsize businesses.
Symphony is the office productivity software component of Lotus Foundations,
which in one box includes Lotus Notes and Domino e-mail, file management,
directory services, self-configuring firewall, self-configuring disk backup, and
anti-virus and anti-spam features.
IBM Lotus Foundations Start lets shops with few or no IT
staffers set up a self-contained collaboration server in under 30 minutes.
The Linux-based system, introduced at Lotusphere in January, will let five to 500
workers create, share and print documents, and use e-mail and calendaring
functions. Foundations includes support for Microsoft Outlook, which is ubiquitous
in today's corporations.
If Symphony is IBM's alternative to Office, Foundations Start is IBM's
response to Microsoft's Small Business Server. The appliance's small footprint
allows the operating system and configuration files to be stored on a
solid-state chip, CD-ROM or hard disk, enabling system recovery in minutes.
Small Business Server recovery, IBM said, requires hours and the support of an IT staff.
IBM Lotus Foundations Start costs $229 per server and $149
per user and may be purchased primarily through IBM
and its business partners. It will be available in several languages by July
30.
