As the VP of LaserJet Marketing, anytime a major vendor announces a new suite of office software, I pay attention! This is because office printing applications--documents, presentations, spreadsheets, etc., are where a lot of printed pages come from. IBM announced that they were bringing back a suite of software (for free) called Lotus Symphony. This is music to my ears (no pun intended).

I was intrigued that IBM decided to bring back the Lotus Symphony Suite--a suite of office applications which includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Its offerings are versions of open-source software developed in a consortium called OpenOffice.org. The software is available for Windows and Linux.

According to the New York Times article, I.B.M. to Offer Office Software Free in Challenge to Microsoft’s Line, "I.B.M.'s Lotus-branded proprietary programs already compete with Microsoft products for e-mail, messaging and work group collaboration. But the Symphony software is a free alternative to Microsoft's mainstay Office programs - Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The Office business is huge and lucrative for Microsoft, second only to its Windows operating system as a profit maker."

I have not used the new I.B.M. software but I have used the OpenOffice version of this software. It’s pretty robust. It will be interesting to see how these full power suites of free software impact the market share of Microsoft Office over time.