Two different analyst views of Lotus Symphony from Lotusphere
January 25 2009
There's a ton of analyst and blogger coverage of Lotusphere, and I can tell that it will take me days to digest it all. In this morning's reading, I'm contemplating the different viewpoints of these two analysts.
Ferris, "Lotus Symphony--Hard to See Why It Will Succeed":
There are reasonable arguments that Symphony will do well:Burton Group, "Lotus Symphony: Looking to Go Beyond Playing Catch Up":
* The recession will stimulate interest in cost savings
* Microsoft competitors such as Google increasingly validate the notion of using free or almost-free technology
However, we doubt Symphony will suck oxygen out of Microsoft's Office market.
At the moment, Symphony acts as a wannabe to Microsoft Office, with a few things missing, such as VB Macros (that feature is coming). If Symphony were just that, it wouldn't be that interesting--true, it could save you licensing fees compared to Office, but that would be all it does: it would improve the bottom line but not offer increased productivity for information workers.I actually agree with both to some degree. Symphony, as it exists today in its 1.2.x version, is a status-quo alternative to desktop productivity. Market feedback has been universally positive -- we have won press awards in the US, Spain, China, Australia, and many other markets; had over 3 million downloads (and this past week was quite a week for Symphony downloads); and have published our first references and early adopter customers. The tight UI and integration amongst the components, as well as simple features like the built-in export to PDF, win easy praise -- especially given the no-cost price tag. That it is backed by IBM is hugely important to those customers, along with the long-term roadmap and commitment.
However, IBM Lotus is becoming a bit more outspoken about their future plans. ... The interesting one is number five: Beyond Office is the idea that Symphony should become part of an ecosystem that makes composite documents, similar to what the DITA standard allows for technical documentation. And guess what--IBM is the company that pioneered DITA. So given the company's DITA heritage and IBM Lotus' declared strategic plan, over the next several years Symphony should become a much more capable, interesting, and productivity enhancing product.
In some markets, that's all we need to do. In China, for example, moving to Symphony is a choice between paying for a legal license of something formerly used without a license and getting something equivalent without having to pay anything. It's no wonder there has been so much success for Symphony there, as well as on the Linux platform. This increases IBM and Lotus brand awareness and helps further pressure the commodity nature of office productivity. Did anyone notice how Microsoft reported a significant decline in Office revenue in their latest fiscal earnings? They try to mask it as a consumer issue, but remember that many small and medium businesses procure Office through OEM hardware bundles, too. The market is recognizing that paying the Microsoft tax for desktop productivity makes no sense. So whether the alternative is Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice,org, StarOffice, Google Docs, Zoho, iWork or anything else, to me the opportunity for choice and flexibility in this space has never been better for the customer. If IBM's presence in this space with Symphony helps open minds and close wallets to the idea that there are alternatives to Microsoft Office, that's a good thing.
In the long term, though, Burton's Guy Creese understands our body language correctly. What we're ultimately looking to accomplish is to open this market to the idea that desktop productivity is ripe for innovation. Today, that innovation is blocked by the Microsoft hold on the space. Once we get past that, IBM and many, many other vendors can start to deliver true innovation in helping users be more productive with documents. Our labs and research teams have tons of great ideas, and we highlighted many of these at Lotusphere last week. Even more will start to come to the fore in the future, and we can all expect to benefit from that evolution.
Post a Comment
- 2
Graham Dodge | 1/25/2009 1:50:32 PM
The negative post came from Ferris Research and I don't see a whole lot of structured reasoning or market numbers in it. It looks like being just one well-known Microsoft fans opinion on a slow news day.
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Rob Wills http://www.inter-weavers.com/ | 1/25/2009 1:56:23 PM
If IBM can continue to get Symphony pre-loaded on hardware with OEM deals and grow the Lotus Foundations market to SMBs then we'll start to get more awareness of what a no brainer Symphony is for at least 80% of employees in most companies. The LotusScript API will help us integrate Symphony better into applications. However, we could also do with updated Import/Export support on the Notes client file menu.
- 4
Randall Shimizu | 1/25/2009 3:27:57 PM
Lotus Symphony is great, but the load time is still to slow. A lot of end users will find this unacceptable. Lotus needs to make load time a top prority.
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Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 1/25/2009 7:27:56 PM
"However, we doubt Symphony will suck oxygen out of Microsoft's Office market"...
I think the market and the analysts have to remember that this isn't necessarily about taking on Microsoft head-on and eroding their market share. It's about giving organisations and home users a choice, where before they would have assumed they had no choice. It's also a long game... organisations have Microsoft agreements and don't need to throw Office away overnight. The important thing is to have a choice when the next decision point comes.
- 6
Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 1/26/2009 9:27:00 AM
Just think if Symphony and the other Open Office variants could take 10% away from Microsoft's Office renewals. That's would be a pretty big chunk of revenue to see disappear.
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John de Giorgio | 1/26/2009 4:52:28 PM
One other point not raised above is the customisation facilities that are open to Symphony due to its Eclipse base. Just think of the automation that can be done from inside Symphony combined with the ODF format. An interesting aspect.
Re point 4 above commenting about loading speed. When was the last time you loaded Office. All the Office products take ages to load on my Thinkpad with 4GB running Vista.
This weekend I switched to a MacBook Air and am running Symphony only on that. Sweet :-) Looking forward to the LotusScript API on Mac.
- 8
John Foldager http://www.johnfoldager.com | 1/27/2009 2:09:05 AM
@7 - I'm also looking forward to the LotusScript API... on all platforms.
I've already asked where this API could be downloaded from (see @6 { Link } ) but hasn't got any answer yet. Anyone???
- 9
John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 1/27/2009 5:46:48 PM
@8 John, it's only available to beta testers at this point. The first version should ship with Symphony 1.3 and Notes 8.5.1. I am not sure of the timing but figure sometime in the middle of 2009. I am going to blog what I showed at Lotusphere and record some videos (once I get proper permission). It is coming soon :-)
- 10
Julian Woodward http://blog.woowar.com | 1/29/2009 4:32:15 PM
@8 - sorry, when I said "new LotusScript API", I should have said "forthcoming..." :-o
Interesting contrast.
For my money, resurrecting the Lotus Symphony name when you did was an uncharacteristically bold move by Lotus, and it seems to have caught the market's imagination to an extent that some would find surprising. I run a Google Alert on it, and see a lot of mentions and reviews. Some of them negative, many of them honest (as above), and some of them glowingly positive.
MS Office will still hold the lion's share of the market for a good few years. But just as Firebox has eaten away a big chunk of IE's share, alternative tools like OpenOffice, Google and Symphony will eat away a big chunk of Office's share. And that's good for all of us, including the people who stick with Office.
Symphony has a special place because of its tight integration with Notes. The new LotusScript API is really well executed, and there's lots more that could, and will, be done to make Symphony a compelling choice for Notes users in particular.