Threats to Office's Dominance Multiply with New Offerings from Adobe, IBM -- ADTmag

Threats to Office's Dominance Multiply with New Offerings from Adobe, IBM

Paying for word processing software may soon be a thing of past if Microsoft competitors Adobe, Google and IBM have any say.

By Becky Nagel
June 3, 2008

Paying for word processing software may soon be a thing of past if Microsoft competitors Adobe, Google and IBM have any say.

Google already offers Google Docs, a free hosted suite of word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools plus online storage. And, of course, there's OpenOffice, the no-cost, open source application suite currently working on its third version.

Now Adobe has jumped into the fray with Acrobat.com, a new beta site featuring free online hosting and collaboration tools. The suite offers a word processor, PDF converter and Web conferencing/desktop sharing tools.

Adobe will be integrating Acrobat.com into Acrobat 9, coming in July. Developer APIs are available for custom integration, the company said.

"Acrobat.com enables individuals to truly work collaboratively on electronic documents," the company said in its announcement of the suite. "Acrobat.com delivers a new way for people to work together online."

Registration for the site is currently open.

And that's not the only new threat: IBM today unveiled the 1.0 version of Lotus Symphony, its free application suite based on the Open Document Format (ODF).

Symphony, released in beta format last year, offers a word processing, spreadsheet and presentation program. It also offers open APIs for integration with Eclipse or other frameworks, the company said.

The free download of 1.0 is now available here, although IBM's Symphony blog notes that the site is experiencing "intermittent problems with the downloads due to heavy demand."

Along with the release of the suite today, IBM announced a new "elite" support package for large enterprises using Symphony. According to reports, the package costs a flat $25,000.

While Microsoft offers free online collaboration tools for Office users through its Office Live Workspace beta, users must have purchased versions of the related Office software to use the site. The Office Live Small Business version of the offering includes a Web site, e-mail and domain name free for one year.

About the Author

Becky Nagel is vice president of AI for 1105 Media, where she specializes in training internal and external customers on maximizing their business potential via a wide variety of generative AI technologies as well as developing cutting-edge AI content and events. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Uses," regularly leads research studies on generative AI business usage, and serves as the director of AI Boardroom, a new resource for C-level executives looking to excel in the AI era. Prior to her current position she was a technical leader for 1105 Media's Web, advertising and production teams as well as editorial director for a suite of enterprise technology publications, including serving as founding editor of PureAI.com. She has 20 years of enterprise technology journalism experience, and regularly speaks and writes about generative AI, AI, edge computing and other cutting-edge technologies. She can be reached at [email protected].