Saving Money On Office Productivity Software

When anyone mentions "office productivity" software, the first thing that comes to mind is Microsoft Office which dominates the market. For businesses and personal users, especially for complex financial reporting and corporate collaboration, Microsoft Office may be their only option.

However, many others may be able to substitute, with no noticable loss of features, one of the free offices productivity suites that provide at least wordprocessing, spreadheet and presentation functions, such as IBM Lotus Symphony (lotus.com);  OpenOffice (openoffice.org); Google Docs (google.com/a) and Zoho Apps (zoho.com).

I have always liked the IBM Lotus Symphony, which has a long prestigious heritage (AMI Pro, VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, etc.), although it was never able to overcome the Microsoft Office juggernaut, as is a robust suite with many unique features and sophisticated productivity aids.  

I believe IBM's mistake in loosing out to Microsoft Office was when IBM allowed Microsoft to jump ahead with graphical interfaces (remember, both Microsoft and IBM office software started out with text only interfaces) and IBM never caught up, being weighted down with viewing everything as a utility for it's massive and complex Lotus Notes collaboration system.  

One of the other hinderences to IBM Lotus Symphony obtaining market share was that it was relatively expensive, particularly for developers. value-added resellers and consultants to own and learn about it for themselves; whereas, Microsoft made it very easy and kept the cost low for them to acquire and, of course, they became the ones that helped evangelize Office for Microsoft.

OpenOffice, primarily supported by the Sun Corporation, is a strong replacement candidate with it's improving robustness and the ability to run on the most popular operating systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS).  I have downloaded OpenOffice and have played with it enough to know that it provided a full set of features by which I could be productive if I was relying solely it.  However, OpenOffice will require some retraining (minor if you only use basic functions) and you may loose some compatibility with Microsoft Office documents if you are doing any collaboration. 

In my situation, I make use of the other applications in the full Microsoft Office suite that are not available in Lotus Sympany or OpenOffice, so I still rely on the latest version of Microsoft Office. 

Lotus Symphony and OpenOffice are both software packages that you download and install on your computer.  They run stand-alone and you do not need to be online to use them.  

Google Docs and Zoho Apps are accessed with a browser on the Internet.  You do not download and install them on your computer.  This can be an advantage to many, as you can access and run them from any computer (and you don't have to install additional copies on each computer you use them) as long as you have a standard Internet browser (i.e., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc.).   

While Zoho may offer a wide breadth of applications, I don't believe either offer all the depth of features and functions that the stand-alone versions currently offer.  Google offers a version with more features for enterprises, but it is not free.  Both require you to have an account and login to use their applications.

For a good comparison of the pros and cons of the four office productivity suites, I direct you to Infowold's recent "Test Center review: Office killers pack some heat".

Copyright 2008 by Lawrence Yerkes. All Rights Reserved.