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IBM Throws Out Microsoft Office

Time: 16:03 EST/21:03 GMT | News Source: *Linked Within Post* | Posted By: Andre Da Costa

360,000 IBM workers have been told to stop using Microsoft Office and switch to the Open Office-based software Symphony.

Quoting an inside source, the German economic newspaper, “Handelsblatt” reports that staff at IBM have been given ten days to change to Symphony, IBM's in-house Lotus software. The use of Microsoft Office will in future require managerial approval.

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Displaying Comments 1 through 35 of 35

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#1 By 7754 (206.169.247.2) at Friday, September 18, 2009 05:13:28 PM

To what extent is Symphony based on OpenOffice (besides supporting ODF)? Lotus has had an office suite for years that was a competitor to OpenOffice, and it looks like the current product is based more on that than OpenOffice....

#2 By 8556 (173.27.242.53) at Friday, September 18, 2009 11:19:50 PM

The new Symphony is a highly modified OpenOffice. IBM's been playing with it for a couple of years. Here's a link to a two year old article on the subject: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/article.php/3703501

#3 By 236329 (58.173.132.231) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 05:18:38 AM

Wow where do these stories come from, first the one saying Bill Gates got it right with his tablet prediction because of the iphone,

and now this non sense.

IBM will Never abandon MS Office while it still has customers that use it. How are IBM employees supposed to interact with their customers? Send them an OS2 disk with Lotus Smartsuite for WINOS2 so their customers can read the IBM proposals? LOL!

#4 By 15406 (99.240.76.72) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 08:08:20 AM

#3: OpenOffice can read & write Doc and ODF. MS Office can read & write DOC and ODF. What's the problem again?

#5 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 09:34:08 AM

#4, There very significant formatting issues that persist and render exchanges impossible.

In the real-world where for example, thousands of discovery documents are exchanged between law firms, firms supporting them with specialized services, accounting firms, and expert witnesses, it simply DOES NOT WORK. Customers of ours ply these waters each day and they are big international firms working with hundreds of different firms we also have to support to enable the entire process and collaborations that are continuous.

We've supported this type of work for over a decades and we've seen the same issues as new versions of software have shipped. Office 2007 with its defaults set to docx, xlsx, pptx, etc... were as much of a challenge. As bad as that can be, ODF is even worse and most especially where excel spreadsheets are concerned.

The problem is that your assertion is simply not accurate - it isn't that simple.

#6 By 17855 (98.156.78.242) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 09:59:32 AM

#5 That may be true. The interesting thing though, if you migrate your organization to a new platform that you develop in house then you will need to fix those issue quickly. Accelerating development. I do not see Symphony dethroning MS Office, but I would like to see better compatibility and IBM should have the resources to pull that off.

#7 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 10:57:45 AM

#6

I am still baffled by the concept of compatibility. Apple has made a multi-billion dollar business out of not being compatible. I think Apple has got this one right. It is only important that all of one companies apps work seamlessly together on its hardware. Not whether they play well with others.

The reason that MS got where it is today is because they became a dominant market force that forced everybody to play by their rules. This is a good thing. A very good thing.

I remember when this was not so. IBM ruled the roost and it was bad, very bad.

#8 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 12:09:16 PM

#'s 6/7

Don't get me wrong... MS does try; however there are enough formatting differences that documents do not make it across all platforms well at all. This is most especially true of spreadsheets and it matters a great deal. Tons of lost time and money are the result and all sides screaming in the meantime: "Just do it/send it, in Office 2003 format!" ........ and PDF is even worse. There is the appearance of compatibility, but among so many means to generate it, they often complex documents are lost in translation. Same drill for ODF - however bad the issues are among office versions, ODF is far worse.

and finally... the only format that has a prayer of being truly useful in the context of distributed connected systems and applications is MS's open standard for XML - now an ISO.
They are the only player with enough coverage and until people embrace that fact, too little progress will be possible and the full potential of distributed document management and collaboration will languish in the present deprecated state.

#9 By 54556 (69.254.149.110) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 12:43:04 PM

OO works fine for my primary business and a couple other businesses that are owned by friends and that I assist from time to time. Has for a couple of years now. Started using OO back for new workstation deployments when MS started releasing new versions that changed the interface more to sell than to offer usefull features. For those users that want to stay on MS office (most of them), I let then run their old MS software; it causes no significant problems (exchange format is locked for all platforms) , but do I have then back at Office XP/2000/2003 levels, I won't buy more recent versions (well, technically I do with volumn licensing but we run version downgraded). Its amusing how only the MS propaganda machine present here seems to have problems...

#10 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 07:23:03 PM

#9

OO is for loosers. Its a dead end and I don't get why everybody hasn't figured that out yet. If for some unknown reason you can't afford a legal copy of Office. Then by all means invest in a reasonably fast data connection and use a free online alternative.

OO will not be in development more than a few more years when everybody figures out that it is stupid. If you don't like MS for some reason use Google's version of office. There will only be two left standing at the end of the day.

Two companies make all the graphic chips, two companies make all the CPU chips. Eventually the same will be true with motherboards and software. Computers need standards and standards are not made in a committee. They are made by some large despotic forces (Governments, multi-national corps etc.)

The universe is not about good v. evil; it is about chaos v. order.

#11 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 09:45:18 PM

#10 Yep. Clearly spoken by a man that faces a payroll every two weeks.

It is what it is.

#12 By 54556 (69.254.149.110) at Saturday, September 19, 2009 11:51:48 PM

Go ahead. Keep on trying to impress your children followers. Its all you've ever done here. If olddog actually ran a company he'd understand about controlling expenses in this economy. His statements had absolutely nothing to do do with business... And BTW, since you're pulling that same front of the paycheck headgame that you were pulling a year ago, I sign more than 150 biweekly. Pull the others on off-weeks that get 1099ed. You really need to get some new lines...

#13 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at Sunday, September 20, 2009 12:34:54 PM

#12

I respect the fact that you are an employer. I still think that most will migrate to online versions of common business software as they have at least as many features as OO and the added advantages of portability (As a result OO will die). In those businesses that exchange information with other businesses, Office will remain the standard.

So I have a question to pose along the same lines. Is the browser world better now that there are about seven commonly used browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.) or were things better back in the IE6 days?

I believe I could make an argument that it was better back in the day. At least I didn't have to remember which browser to open to get a site to render properly!

#14 By 1896 (68.153.171.248) at Sunday, September 20, 2009 12:42:51 PM

#13: If you have no competitors you do not have any compelling reason to improve what you offer; like it or not this is the reality.

As for proper rendering I could argue that "standards" would solve the problem; btw I agree that nowadays we have problems.

#15 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Monday, September 21, 2009 09:21:57 AM

#5: There are formatting issues in some cases. Most businesses use only a small subset of Office features, most of which are duplicated in OO. You make it sound like every business uses highly-customized MS Office documents when that really isn't the case.

#7: I'm still baffled by the concept of people who can't (or won't) see the benefits of open standards and how closed standards harm innovation & lead to vendor lock-in.

#8: MS tries hard to pay lip service to the concepts of competition and compatibility/interoperability, but they are empty words. We've had this discussion so many times in the past, and I'm amazed that you continue to cling to this fantasy that MS supports interoperability (as opposed to intraoperability which MS wholeheartedly embraces) when history, their actions and all evidence point to the contrary.

#10: OO is for loosers. Its a dead end and I don't get why everybody hasn't figured that out yet.

There are so many things wrong in that one post. I'm not sure how you reconcile that OO is dying when it gets bigger, more developed and more widely used every year. That seems like the exact opposite of death.

#11: It's not complimentary to you, the way you suck up to those who share your point of view.

#13: Is the browser world better now that there are about seven commonly used browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.) or were things better back in the IE6 days?

After watching IE stagnate for 5 years before Firefox kicked it in the ass, do you really need to ask that question? Really?? I use the web a lot and I use Firefox exclusively. Things are already way past the point of stumbling upon IE-only sites. Those days are long gone, and good riddance.

#16 By 9589 (71.54.56.105) at Monday, September 21, 2009 11:44:10 AM

Ho hum, IBM dictates to their employees . . . They did this exact same thing with much fan fare about five years ago. IBMers went back to what they were doing - using Micorosft OS and applications including Office. They'll do the same this time. zzzzzzzzzz

By the way, how is that Munich conversion to open sore going? lol

#17 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Monday, September 21, 2009 12:46:14 PM

#16: By the way, how is that Munich conversion to open sore going? lol

Slow but steady, despite political interference from proprietary software interests. To quote:

"Since the Munich migration was first announced, there have been rumours and reports on the web about its progress including stories that the project had stalled and had even been reversed, said Schiessl.

"There were a lot of rumours about what didn't go right in Munich. I don't know where the rumours came from but I am very often asked, "Oh, I have heard that Munich is going back to Microsoft solutions because you are failing your project." I don't know who spread this but that is anti-lobbying," he said."

http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=866

Why do you ask?

#18 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Monday, September 21, 2009 03:25:44 PM

Hello? JD??? Helllllllloooooooo? I would have thought you'd be back with another gem, considering your interest in the Munich OSS adoption.

Man, AW seems to be full of people who snipe from the sidelines and then disappear when the target shoots back.

#19 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at Monday, September 21, 2009 09:03:17 PM

Latch,

I've got a hard drive full of old patient files in .wpd format. At the time WordPerfect was the number one word processing program. When my Israeli IT guy told me I was a fool to not migrate to Office I laughed.

He got the last laugh.

#20 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Tuesday, September 22, 2009 08:06:33 AM

#19: You're always going to have that problem, no matter which software you use. This is why open file formats are so important. Even if you had converted those old WP files to Word, do you have any guarantee from Microsoft that MS Office 2025 will be able to read them?

#21 By 89249 (64.207.240.90) at Tuesday, September 22, 2009 01:58:14 PM

Office Standard 2007 Retail: $340
Average Usage Timespan: 2 years
Daily Usage Cost: $0.65 first 2 years

Office Upgrade: $210
Average Usage Timespan: 2 years
Daily Usage Cost: $0.40 every 2 years

By using OO you are increasing your maintenance costs, reducing your options for third party software, etc. to save an daily cost of $0.52 over 4 years. If you are benefiting "financially" in these "hard economic times" by saving half a buck per day per worker... you may be at the end of your rope.

If you want to save money in your office I'd strongly recommend cutting out free coffee and bagels or moving your climate control 2-3 degrees. You'll save more money than neutering your workers by having them use an "free" office program.

#22 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Tuesday, September 22, 2009 02:52:07 PM

#21: Wow. I have a few questions for you:

1) How many systems under school board control are running MS Office? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

2) After detailing the costs of Office, you then claim that OO is more expensive without providing any OO numbers whatsoever. How do you make that claim?

3) How are you reducing your options for third-party software? I assume you mean Office plugins? There are lots of extensions for OO as well.

If you are benefiting "financially" in these "hard economic times" by saving half a buck per day per worker... you may be at the end of your rope.

What if we're talking about 100,000 systems running Office? That amounts to $52,000 PER DAY. btw MS gave up that ROI argument against Linux because they couldn't convince people that free was more expensive than expensive.

This post was edited by Latch on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 15:00.

#23 By 89249 (64.207.240.90) at Tuesday, September 22, 2009 03:56:06 PM

1) So if I multiply a number by many times it becomes scarey? Half a dollar per computer per day. Oh and I guess if we're talking about schools you can pretty much cut all my numbers in half.

2) Purchase prices of all "free" software is nil. Management, Deployment, Training, Lost Productivity all have costs. Depending on each implementation of the software those costs add up. MS Office has some of those costs involved but has an insanely mature ecosystem for each. OpenOffice doesn't even compete in the same arena.

3) Again, ecosystem. MS has made office one of the easiest programs to extend that I've ever seen. The entire talent pool who can write in something as simple as VBA can extend the hell out of Office. This includes many who have never written a line of real programming code. Aside from ease of creation the library of Office addins dwarfs OO's in count and usability. Granted this is hard to quantify, but one only needs to put on their logic cap.

And your final comment is childish at best. I find it funny that someone thinks they can take a number of insignificance and multiply it by a bajillion to make it significant. HOLY CRAP $52k PER DAY I WAS SO WRONG. The savings or gains in your example are all multiplied 100k fold.

And to play along, my recommendation to lower the thermostat a couple degrees in a building housing 100k computers will still yield more savings.

Purchase price is not the only cost of software despite what the OOS bro's believe. Office is going to be in nearly every job you occupy. It will allow you to more efficiently get your work done even today with the competitors around. It will be supported indefiniately by Microsoft's full force because it is their prized product.

Oh and I know they didn't bother giving that ROI argument about Linux. But sadly I would assert that it's because they realized the argument didn't need to be made. After a decade of ppl touting "free software" they still move the same amount of licenses into the market. They didn't stop because it wasn't working, they stopped because it wasn't needed.

#24 By 89249 (64.207.240.90) at Tuesday, September 22, 2009 04:01:45 PM

Oh and three more thoughts -

1) Did you keep multiplying .52 by a number until it yielded the scare factor you were looking for or did you start out right at 100k?

2) I have deployed OO on a few computers. Mainly for machines that ppl who don't need to use productivity software regularly use. In that context, where the worker will yield too little increased productivity it makes sense to through the cheapo junk at them.

3) My comment in 2 should not let you assume that that logic works with students at this gigantic school Latch found. There they also have a responsibility to prepare students for real world jobs, at which point the value comes from learning how to use software they will run into when they get out of school

This post was edited by MrHumpty on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 16:05.

#25 By 9589 (68.17.52.2) at Tuesday, September 22, 2009 04:38:15 PM

I've done some charitable work from time to time consisting mostly of tech refreshes of non-profits. Microsoft, as do many of the major vendors, provide nearly free software to them. Schools are no exception.

For example, I purchased under a recent 501(c) charter, Windows Vista Business and Office 2007 Enterprise for 35 computers plus SBS 2008 Premium w/40 cal pack for $1800. As I recall, just SBS 2008 Premium w/o the 50 cal pack was over $1800. This non-profit couldn't belive their ears when I told them of the savings.

We bought the workstations and servers from Dell at considerable savings, as well. While Dell gave them a hefty discount it was nothing as extravagant as Microsoft's.

This particular non-profit was a group of attorneys that gave freely over their time to the less fortunate. From a technical viewpoint, it would have been less than desirable for them to have to use open sore software, as they interact with businesses and government entities as a regular part of their practice. Having file formats that the rest of the planet uses makes that aspect of their work a non issue. Having the power of Microsoft Office allows them to bring in a plethora of third party add-ons that just don't exist in the open sore world.

#26 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Wednesday, September 23, 2009 08:07:13 AM

#23: [1] You're trying to minimize the expense of Office by putting it down to a tiny number per workstation amortized over a couple of years, but there are a LOT of workstations. How many schools have systems running Office? How many schools does the average school board support? How many school boards are there in each state on average? How many in all of America? That's where my 100,000 guess came from (and it is a guess).

[2] The costs of transition are a one-time expense. From there, you realize greater savings the longer you use OO.

But sadly I would assert that...

Which one of Ketchum's kids are you? You may assert all you like, but MS's bogus ROI tricks have long since been debunked.

#24: [1] I made a blind guess as to how many computers running Office there were per state school board.

[2] Sure you have. Why would an MS fanboy install something he considers inferior?

#27 By 89249 (64.207.240.90) at Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:26:11 AM

#26 It doesn't matter how many workstations we are talking about the costs are fixed per computer and worker when you do budgets and run a company. With increases costs are also increases in revenue (unless you are the government). It doesn't matter how many times you multiply it we're still talking about 1 computer to x workers/students. That is your cost to employ or educate that individual. It is such a small cost in almost every case that you are spending more keeping that individual comfortable through climate control or lighting.

Again, making an insignificant number significant by multiplying it is useless.
-----
See I'm explaining to you that MS's ROI "tricks" are not tricks. You're talking about about pennies a day at best for most of Microsoft's Products to support each individual or customer. Even with Windows Server you're talking about around a dollar per day cost per worker in many cases to open up your options to millions more it professionals, utility packages, and software packages alone. It is easy to understand yet hard to swallow for you I'm sure. The purchase price of nearly all software is more than palatable when looked at through the prism of logic.

Again, even ignoring the previous paragraph Microsoft's installation base has barely noticed Linux in it's primary marketplace. Common estimates put Microsoft's "Server" marketshare at a little less than half in 2000. Today Microsoft estimated to have anywhere from 60-70%. Again they realized the ROI argument didn't need to be made as I asserted because they, even after having their bogus tricks debunked, are still finding more and more marketshare.

Now, I know the default position in your head is "ppl are just dumb k?" but frankly there are plenty like me who realize the value added in running windows boxes. Saving $799 on my dell purchase on a server I will use for 3 years to accomodate 50+ users just isn't worth it.
-----
Even inferior things are still useful for some tasks. Surely I could drive a Ferrari to work every day but my Jeep does just fine and is more cost effective with my budget. OO is great for bro's who just need a bit more than Wordpad (although now I point these workers to google apps, which will soon change to MS's we office). Making a list or keeping a supply count in a spreadsheet that is for that individual's use is fine. The person most likely doesn't even have the skillset to utilize Office's features to begin with. So in my senario it still works. It's not worth the $0.52 for that user to have such a marginal increase in productivity so OO it is. Which, funny enough, is the reason it gets installed more often than not. Google Apps & MS Ad driven Web Apps will soon kill that reasoning though.

This post was edited by MrHumpty on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 10:30.

#28 By 89249 (64.207.240.90) at Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:34:58 AM

Also I forgot to mention. On the subject of the article I think it's cool that IBM is "eating their own dog food." Frankly no product can become good w/o real world testing. This will finally get some of that testing done since I havent heard of anybody using this software let alone talking about it. Granted I don't care much to follow productivity software news but still I had to google what they were talking about.

Hopefully it will make the product decent and provide some extra competition for google/corel/microsoft. Speaking of which I wonder how long WordPerfect will survive as Governments stop using it and other feature rich and cheaper options start showing up.

#29 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Wednesday, September 23, 2009 12:51:54 PM

#27: WTF are you talking about?? You cannot simply wave away the massive costs by arguing it's pennies per day per system when you're talking about a very large amount of systems. When you add up all the systems that are pennies per day, it's tens of thousands of dollars per day. That is a significant amount of money for strapped school boards. You can't just dismiss it.

#30 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at Wednesday, September 23, 2009 09:16:05 PM

Latch,

Be very careful what you wish for. If there is no value in software then if you work in IT by extension you provide no value to a business (Why aren't your services free?).

I would argue otherwise. I am tired of those who think all intellectual property should be free. If this is the case all regular workers in the Western World should be very afraid. The first world countries for all intents and purposes survive on intellectual property.

This post was edited by oldog on Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at 21:16.

#31 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at Thursday, September 24, 2009 04:28:13 AM

Latch,

Too many people look at MS Office in isolation. While the system is powerful enough in its own right, office is a system and is most often used as part of a large number of internal and external members. We can list the obvious extensions found in Exchange and SharePoint, or Live Communications Server, and these too, while very powerful, aren't enough. A great many people use Office as a means to share external data - apps data that is exchanged with key external partners. Take insurance claims processing, for example. Seems small - until you consider how many different companies process and touch such data - realizing of course, they do so not with static data in flat files, but dynamic data as dependent upon secondary, or post-processing as it is upon the applications that originally stored and helped manipulate it. Only when "Office" is assessed in this larger context can its value be well understood or compared to alternatives.

Open Office does not allow for this and it does matter - a lot. The cost of Microsoft Office has to be considered inclusive of this context (at least).

Finally, I know that the most important parts of my business are the people that work in it. The same is true of every business and practice we support. All of us work hard to ensure that the people in our businesses have the best tools possible and that coming to work - which in all cases involves using information that is exchanged digitally, presents a good experience for people. If we were to force our people to use Open Office, absent the necessary capabilities inherent to the Microsoft Office System, we'd be making their jobs much harder and they'd be much less productive as a result. There are costs associated with using any product, including MS Office, but in so many cases, the costs of NOT using MS Office are much higher.

#32 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Thursday, September 24, 2009 08:13:42 AM

#30: Be very careful what you wish for. If there is no value in software then if you work in IT by extension you provide no value to a business (Why aren't your services free?).

I'm not Richard Stallman. I do not for an instant think that all IP should be free. However, if there is some that is free and it is suitable for your use, why not use it? This especially true if the alternative is expensive and you don't have a lot of money. It's not black & white, all or nothing. Many people donate their time & skills to make free software better. Free software can coexist with commercial software. One does not preclude the other.

#31: We're talking about usage in public schools and high schools by students. They don't need all the bargle in Office that you mentioned. They need a simple office suite that performs the most common tasks.

#33 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at Thursday, September 24, 2009 08:47:03 AM

#32, No Latch, young people in schools most especially need to use these types of tools and in ever increasingly sophisticated ways - that is what they are going to encounter in the real world.

Elsewhere on the board there has been a lot of discussion around what students should be learning and certainly, work flows and the tools used throughout them are among the things students need to have experience with.

#34 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at Thursday, September 24, 2009 09:26:24 AM

#33: No, no they don't. This is purely you pushing your usual Microsoft agenda. Half of these MS tools won't even exist in 10-15 years time or not in their current form. The "real world" will have changed in the meantime.

#35 By 89249 (70.177.100.33) at Friday, September 25, 2009 06:13:30 PM

When you add up all the systems that are pennies per day, it's tens of thousands of dollars per day.

If we're talking about school systems lets get something straight. You are talking about many students and teachers per computer on average for government school funded computers. That in itself strengthens my argument.

But to address your breathless argument above. The average cost of educating a single student in the United States in government schools is around $8000/year. If you think pulling Office out of the school for OO is going to make up for the thousands of easier cost cuts you're drunk. Government Schooling is plagued with waste. Trim that waste and then we can talk about the tiny amount of money spent on productivity software.

Again, the cost per student is tiny if not insignificant when put into context. It doesn't matter if we're talking about educating 1 student or 5 million. All costs can be broken down on a per student basis. Cutting out becoming familier with the productivity software they are going to use when they get a job or simply being more productive in general in classes etc. to save ~$200 of the ~$8000 costs to educate that student is a joke.

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