Why
Pay for Office when Symphony is Free?
This is
the essence of IBM’s message with which it wants to hit Microsoft Office
software and also promote its own new version of Lotus Symphony, a free
of charge productivity software suite.
IBM
says it’s offering millions of companies and consumers the chance to
save hundreds of dollars on each of their Microsoft Office licenses by
providing support for Microsoft Office 2007 with the new version of
Lotus Symphony.
"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 Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of Lotus
Software. "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."
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, and easy use of, the contents of
their Office files, it says.
Lotus
Symphony version 1.3 is now
available free of charge on the Web at
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/symphony/. In addition,
Symphony is shipped with every copy of Lotus Notes and Lotus Foundations
software, according to IBM.
IBM's
alternative to Microsoft Office 2007 aims to make cost-free document
software a legitimate option for many companies. In addition to adding
support for Microsoft Office 2007 file formats, IBM says, Lotus Symphony
1.3 offers DataPilot Table improvements that make it easy to drill down
and analyze data.
It also
enhances mail merge and envelope printing for organizations that need
software features to communicate with their customers. Symphony 1.3 also
provides animation support for presentations and interoperates with
Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, says IBM.
The new
version of Symphony allows users to drag-and-drop plug-ins, extending
its use to other business applications. For example, a new learning
plug-in can be installed on the right sidebar to help people learn new
Symphony capabilities in real-time use.
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