Pay-to-use brands have long slugged it out to get a share of the lucrative office productivity software market. Now, they have to contend with a growing breed of competitors – the free software.

Office alternatives make headway
by Chandra Devi

MICROSOFT Office is the best known office productivity suite, but there are other choices which are available for free.

Free and open office productivity software have been developed to be on par with their proprietary cousins. The functionality and user interface are even similar.

Free and open source programs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and other types of office applications basically have their foundation in OpenOffice.org, a project spearheaded by Sun Microsystems. IBM and Google are also involved in this project to build a more solid standard for the associated programs.

Sun is the primary contributor of code for OpenOffice.org. It all began when Sun bought over German outfit Star Division, the original developer of the StarOffice desktop program, which was later turned into an open source project.

Meanwhile, IBM is making its presence felt in the free office productivity software market with Lotus Symphony, which originated from the company’s SmartSuite office productivity software that did not quite stir up competition in the commercial world. It is now offering its open source versions developed under the OpenOffice.org consortium.

As for Google, it is offering open source desktop productivity programs as part of its Google Pack software. It supports the same document formats in its online word processor and spreadsheet service.

Besides the three main players, OpenOffice.org has support from Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000 and over 450,000 people worldwide. With industry players and communities working together, the reliability issue of OpenOffice.org applications no longer arises.

The open office productivity software comes with free community and commercial support and training, OpenOffice.org books and general community resources.

Several versions of OpenOffice have been developed, the latest being OpenOffice 2.4. There is also a beta version of OpenOffice 3.0. Beginning with version 2.0, OpenOffice.org uses the open standard Oasis (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) OpenDocument XML format as the default file format.

‘Free’ tools help to rein in users despite flaws
By Izwan Ismail and Syameen Md Khalili

PUBLIC relations executive Azwar Nazli employs OpenOffice.org suite for handling personal as well as work-related tasks.

The suite is a cross-platform office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems.

It supports the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office 1997 to 2003 formats, among many others.

“I use OpenOffice Writer because it is free and it works fine on my Asus Eee PC. I can do my work anywhere, anytime. It also has some features that Word doesn’t have, like OpenOffice Impress,” he added.

While the cost benefit is clear, Azwar said the OpenOffice is not without setbacks.

“Sometimes the formats aren’t converted properly when I switch between Microsoft Office. I hope to see improvements in terms of format compatibility, as well as getting more features, such as a more updated set of fonts,” said Azhar.

Despite these flaws, he is quite happy with OpenOffice and plans to stick with it.

For IT manager Yong Yoon-Kit, who has been using OpenOffice.org for over five years now, the “free” factor is appealing enough.

“With office suites costing between RM400 and RM1,600 depending on feature sets, this becomes significant in terms of total ownership costs of PCs, where a new PC nowadays only cost RM2,500,” he said, adding that usage of free and open source software (FOSS) can bring about an immediate 30 to 40 per cent savings.

Although there are some issues with document conversions, he said it is mainly the fault of the opaqueness of proprietary document formats.

“Now that Microsoft Office will be supporting OpenDocument Format natively, this will hopefully be an issue of the past,” he added.

Yong said the good thing about FOSS products like OpenOffice.org is the reassurance that any upgrades, features and bug fixes will be available in the future.

The fact that ODF and FOSS are free and offerred by trusted names like IBM, Sun and Google, helps to boost their usage, especially among those who are cost-conscious and believe in the free software concept.

Open software needs time to gain momentum

Springboard Research’s vice president of software research Michael Barnes feels that free alternatives to Microsoft Office are compelling because they are less complicated to use, and focus on basic functions that most users require.

Nonetheless, there is a cost associated with switching over to an unfamiliar application, even a free one, particularly in areas of technical support and training.

Another issue to consider is compatibility between free offerings and Microsoft Office. Open Document Format has steadily gained traction over the past few years but Microsoft continues to push its own alternative called Open XML.

Though technical translators are available and can help users overcome compatibility issues, they are not entirely fool-proof.

While text may translate easily between products, for instance, fonts and formatting may not. But Microsoft Office still has a big market share and this won’t change dramatically in the near future.

However, with backing from IBM (Symphony), Sun (StarOffice), Google (Docs) and other offerings (primarily based on the open source OpenOffice project), the alternatives are viable and increasingly becoming credible options.

Microsoft will continue to dominate the office productivity market, but the free alternatives are expected to eat away at this dominance over the next two to three years.

Users of Microsoft Office alternatives will gain, with more acceptance of the software-as-a-service concept. As SaaS solutions gain credibility, organisations, particularly small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) will take a more serious look at SaaS-based Microsoft Office alternatives, with Google Docs being the most likely candidate.

With backing from major IT vendors like IBM, Google, Sun, and Adobe, the market for free office productivity software will grow across Asia-Pacific.

“We expect positive experiences of early adopters combined with a push for open document formats among AP governments to spur growth in this market,” Barnes added.

For Clabby Analytics’ president Joe Clabby, “The popularity and acceptance of free office productivity tools can be judged from the number of downloads of such software.”

There are over a million downloads of Open Office and about 20,000 downloads of Lotus symphony, etc today. This is just one download site and there are dozens of others. Hence, the downloading activity is strong.

The main factor driving the use of these software is their no fees-attached tag. The disadvantages however are probably in terms of support. Unlike licensed software, users are mostly on their own.

“The free software uptake would definitely gain momentum, but not in the near future. This will happen over time, when governments and businesses start using these software more heavily under the SaaS arrangement. The SaaS market will drive the usage of free software,” Clabby said.