IBM challenges Microsoft with its free Office software suite

A long-simmering rivalry between the top two tech titans, Microsoft and International Business Machine (IBM), appears to have deepened. IBM, also known as Big Blue, on Tuesday launched a beta suite of online office applications which may pose strong challenge to Microsoft Corp's ubiquitous Office suite.

Intended for creating, editing, and sharing word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, IBM’s free software package called Symphony, will compete with Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs.

With the launch of its free software package, the Armonk-based IBM Corp. tries to disrupt Microsoft’s efforts to convince corporate customers to buy the newest version of its market-leading Office suite, which was developed along with Microsoft’s new Vista operating system.

The Lotus Symphony software is a set of applications that comprises “Symphony Documents”, a word processor to rival Word, “Symphony Spreadsheets”, a spreadsheet to go up against Excel and “Symphony Presentations”, business-presentation software as an alternative to PowerPoint.

The Symphony software package, which supports Windows and Linux desktops, can be downloaded free of charge. The home edition of Microsoft's Office sells for US$120 on Internet retail sites.

IBM’s new Lotus Symphony supports an internationally recognized information-display standard called the Open Document Format (ODF), and is based on many of the same tools found in company's pricey Lotus Notes 8 e-mail and instant-messaging collaboration software, IBM said.

By introducing Symphony with ODF support, IBM enables organizations to access, use, and maintain their documents over the long term without worrying about end-of-life uncertainties or ongoing software licensing and royalty fees. This international standard’s stated aim is to let documents be read by multiple software applications, rather than requiring any one system.

Calling the ODF standard an “incredibly important initiative as an industry," Ed Brill, a business unit executive for worldwide sales at IBM/Lotus, at a Tuesday launch event in Manhattan, said the company is looking to see the "proliferation of tools that use [ODF] standards."

Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, is already facing competition from Google’s online suite of software, dubbed Google Apps. Launched in February, the software bundle is available for a $50 annual fee per user.

Besides the Web-based programs like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk instant messaging, and the Google customizable Start Page feature, the Premium Edition suit contains Google Docs & Spreadsheets as well. At the time of launch, it was touted as Google's alternative to existing licensed packages such as Microsoft Office.

The competition between the most successful and influential software company, Microsoft and Google, the leader in Web search and a provider of software applications run over the Internet has intensified for the last few months. Both the companies are making efforts to enter each others’ territories.

Whereas, the search mammoth has created its own online software suit, intended to beat Microsoft’s office suit, Redmond based software company has launched its search engine, Live Search, which is crafted to compete with offerings from rival online powerhouses Google.