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In addition to the release of the generally available public release, IBM has announced for-pay software support help to accompany its Lotus Symphony office productivity software.  Lotus Symphony is a direct competitor to the market leading Microsoft Office suite, and joins a legion of alternative productivity suites, including Google Apps.  The software itself, which includes full-feature word processing, presentation design, and spreadsheet application, is free, though many companies have expressed concerns about the long term sustainability of free software.  IBM’s move lends credence to Symphony as a genuine alternative, by following a more conventional for-profit business model in the deliver of software.

The market for this type of software is increasingly competitive, as corporate IT departments make crucial buying decisions regarding Office 2007.  Major overhauls to the program interfaces, coupled with steep hardware requirements and ever-more complex access licensing can make an Office 2007 deployment just as painful and expensive as moving to an alternative solution.  By stepping up the service offering, IBM is signaling that their Symphony suite is a genuine competitor, rather than a corporate experiment.  IBM also has a very strong (and entrenched) offering in office collaboration software with their Lotus Notes package, which integrates email and collaborative communications.  The new Symphony software integrates easily with existing Notes deployments, and even contains APIs allowing it to be used in composite Notes applications.  Microsoft offers similar functionality with the integration of SharePoint and Exchange server products, but is again disadvantaged by a cumbersome pricing scheme.

Pricing for the new service is flexible between $25 and $50 per user, with a maximum cap of $25,000 for the help desk support.  This equates to 10,000+ users in a best-case scenario, with additional users being free.  Contrast this with Microsoft’s licensing, which is infinitely variable - there is no cap, though larger companies are able to negotiate lower licensing fees.  Companies who already have a Lotus Notes/Domino deployment can add Symphony for free, and drop the cost of document creation software altogether.  Another advantage of Symphony is native support for the Open Document Format (ODF) ISO 26300, which can free companies from the lock-in to Microsoft’s proprietary Office formats.  In a time of corporate mega-mergers and cost cutting, Microsoft could find that IBM’s Symphony is a sweeter tune to the ear of cost conscious CIOs.

Read [Reuters]