Datamation: IBM Lotus Symphony Upsets Well-Known Rivals

March 9 2008

Useful context for why Lotus Symphony is in market...

For its part, IBM sees Symphony as much more than a tool for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. According to Doug Heintzman, director of strategy for IBM collaboration products and Lotus, "Symphony is not just an editing suite; it's one piece of a much larger strategy."

That strategy involves directly challenging Microsoft in the office productivity market. "We looked at the landscape dominated by one monopolistic vendor and saw an opportunity for a free alternative. This is, frankly, an effort to commoditize a space overdue for commoditization." explains Heintzman. ...

Heintzman believes that these types of features are the tip of the iceberg in changing the way people view and use office productivity software. "The time has come for a next-generation paradigm. The next big paradigm that follows the Office paradigm will unleash users' creativity in a new way."
Consistent with the messages delivered in the US Lotusphere Comes to You events...I will debrief on San Francisco sometime in the next day or two.

Link: Datamation: IBM Lotus Symphony Upsets Well-Known Rivals >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus Symphony  Add/View Comments [4]

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  1. 1  Tony Palmer http://palmerweb.blogspot.com | 3/10/2008 12:44:21 AM

    Hearing this about a Lotus product is fantastic.

    'The suite receives almost universal praise for its clean, extremely intuitive interface.'

    :-)))

  1. 2  Rock http://www.lotusgeek.com | 3/10/2008 11:58:46 AM

    You know how I always say that everything is cyclic - including patterns in the market. Notes/Domino went through a cycle - we were popular, then we dropped out of popularity, and now we're cycling back into popularity again. Well, the office marketspace seems to be cycling - FINALLY! I was worried that MS had been so successful at crushing that market with MS Office that there were no competitors to allow that market to cycle away from MS Office; but it is very fortunate (especially for us!) that Lotus came out with Symphony (and thankfully OpenOffice was there to give Lotus something on which to base Symphony).

    Now that huge pendulum can begin to swing back our way, and we can see Lotus Symphony slowly rise in popularity. Maybe - just maybe - we can watch MS Office lose a bit of that marketshare for a change. Hopefully a lot of it will go to Lotus Symphony, and I am sure some of it will go to OpenOffice - personally I just want to see it leave MS and go somewhere else. I hope it does go to Lotus, but as long as it leaves MS, I am happy.

    I know I am dreaming, but wouldn't it be nice to see MS lose marketshare in the browser space (to Firefox), the office space (to Lotus Symphony and OpenOffice), and the collaboration and email space (to Notes/Domino)? Wow, it sure would be a great future.

    Hey, a guy can dream, can't he? ;)

  1. 3  Samuel deHuszar Allen http://www.essentialforms.com | 3/10/2008 5:29:29 PM

    @2 ...and their OS marketshare to Ubuntu and OSX! ;-P

  1. 4  Bilal Jaffery http://www.bilal.ca | 3/11/2008 12:36:15 PM

    I would love to what Microsoft has planned to compete against the 'free' alternatives to their $900 dollar suite?

    Recently, they did try to give away Professional suites to students for $49 in Canada. I am not sure if it was successful or not. I guess, we will find out in next little while.