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(Credit: IBM)

Microsoft Office is not just overpriced--for most users, it's overkill. That's why I've been increasingly recommending IBM Lotus Symphony, a well-rounded office suite that just so happens to be free. It's built on open-source favorite OpenOffice, but sports a sleeker, friendlier interface.

Symphony (available for Windows and Linux) offers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. It supports Office 2003 file formats as well as OpenDocument and others. And it relies on an ingenious tabbed interface that keeps all your documents under the same roof--no switching between apps like with most other suites. I particularly like the sidebars, which keep frequently used settings close at hand while reducing toolbar clutter.

What's the bad news? Symphony is still in beta, and it has the bugs to prove it. It's kind of slow, too. But you can't argue with the price. Why spend upwards of $400 on Office when you can get most of the same features (and a less intimidating interface) for nothing?

IBM this week quietly updated its Lotus Symphony desktop applications with a feature that hints at its broader strategy to use the Web and standards to up-end Microsoft's massive Office business.

Introduced last September, Lotus Symphony is a free suite of applications based on OpenOffice, an open-source alternative to Office. The fourth beta of Symphony, due for release next week, will add a module that will let IBM and other software companies add extensions to these applications.

Under a strategy called "Beyond Office," IBM is developing several technologies to make Symphony an extensible development platform for business applications and Web-based document editors.

Rather than compete head-to-head with Microsoft Office, IBM's strategy is to make documents act like "containers" for information within workflow and collaboration applications, according to IBM executives.

The plan also calls for IBM to make documents based on the Open Document standard available through Web browsers using Adobe Flash or HTML. On Wednesday, IBM opened a Web site called Bluehouse where small business people can access hosted Web applications for sharing documents.

"We don't have any intention of trying to monetize the Office space," said Doug Heintzman, director of strategy for IBM collaboration technologies. "Symphony is a platform play.

"Document editors--for presentations, spreadsheets, charting--are simply components users can wire and reconfigure and attach different modules to bring in functionality," he explained. "This changes the entire landscape."

Lotus Symphony is the centerpiece of IBM's strategy to do an end-run around Microsoft's dominant desktop application business.

(Credit: IBM)

At its Lotusphere conference this week, IBM showed Symphony plug-ins that can translate text into languages or find the closest gas station to a location written a document. The plug-in framework is based on the Eclipse Rich Client software.

ODF versus Open XML
Central to IBM's desktop strategy is its support of standards. The company has been on the forefront of pushing for the adoption of Open Document Format, or ODF, the native file formats in OpenOffice.

ODF is now an international standard and being considered or favored by the large customers, notably national governments concerned with long-term archiving of digital information.

Microsoft has had the file formats in Office 2007--called Open Office XML (OOXML)--certified as an international standard which is now developed through a multiparty process. It faces an important ballot vote next month at the ISO, the International Organization for Standardization.

Because ODF is based on XML, vendors like IBM can build sophisticated applications such as multistep claims processing programs, which users access through familiar document editors or spreadsheet, Heintzman said.

Microsoft, too, has already built tools and other servers that allow for workflow and business intelligence-style applications which are a big enhancement to Office 2007.

IBM is also supporting XForms, a World Wide Web Consortium standard for embedding forms within documents. Standards such ODF serve to commoditize desktop applications, allowing people to innovate around those basic editors, Heintzman argued.

"We strongly believe that an enormous amount of innovative potential has been held back by the network effects around the file formats and the proprietary control that Microsoft has had around those formats," he said.

IBM favors ODF as a file format because it is "truly open" and technically elegant, Heintzman said.

But IBM will support Open XML, which is the current document format in Office 2007, in its Lotus collaboration and portal products. IBM already supports older versions of Office.

Symphony coming to the Web
As part of Beyond Office, IBM is working on providing Web access to Symphony applications.

It already has working demonstrations that show how ODF-based content can be shown in a browser. Users will also be able to edit documents through a browser without having to install the Symphony editors.

Many of those Web-based application features will be available through Bluehouse, which is aimed at small- and medium-size businesses. They cover the ability to create and save documents, maintain contacts, and chat.

"We're going to take this well beyond the dominant paradigm," Heintzman said.

Beyond Office is a project name that serves as a framework for the product development of Symphony along with several different research initiatives within IBM.

"We hope to mature and refine this this year and hopefully at next year's Lotusphere we'll start to lay out this next generation vision in a very concrete way," he said.

At its annual Lotusphere conference, IBM on Wednesday showed off an early version of Lotus Mashups, a tool designed to let businesspeople, rather than professional programmers, quickly assemble Web applications.

The application will let people combine, or mash up, data from enterprise applications and the Web. It uses a browser-based visual tool and a set of pre-built widgets for displaying information.

A mashup that combines mapping and storm-related information with an inventory system.

(Credit: IBM)

IBM has been pursuing the idea of giving end users in businesses powerful enough tools to build their own applications.

These Web applications may be relatively simple and only be used for a short time. But IBM executives have said that it represents a significant business opportunity for its Lotus collaboration software division.

For example, a person could build a mashup that combines weather information with a retail management system to adjust inventories based on project weather patterns.

IBM first started with end user-driven software development when it introduced QEDWiki two years ago, a product with a similar goal.

Lotus Mashups will use the QEDWiki technology, which IBM's Emerging Technology group first developed, but it will be a separate commercial product, said Doug Heintzman, director of strategy for IBM's collaboration technologies.

A mashup that combines business social networking and comapny organization charts.

(Credit: IBM)

Heintzman said he thought it could be possible that in the future, IT departments will analyze the applications created by end users and "harden" them for broader deployment within companies.

Last year at Lotusphere, IBM introduced other products inspired by Web 2.0-style consumer applications, including Lotus Connections, social-networking software for businesses.

Updated at 9:15 AM PT with comments from IBM. Screen shots added.

IBM has released a patch for highly critical security flaws in its Lotus Notes, following the discovery of vulnerabilities in a third-party software component used in Lotus 1-2-3.

Users who open a malicious file attachment can trigger a buffer overflow, as Lotus 1-2-3 tries to process the Lotus Worksheet file format. The vulnerabilities could allow a malicious attacker to take control of a user's system remotely and execute arbitrary code, according to Core Security Technologies, which issued a security advisory on Tuesday.

(Credit: IBM)

"Although these specific vulnerabilities exist on a third-party component, the problem is compounded by the way Lotus Notes displays information about attachments, making it easier to elicit unsuspecting assistance from the users to exploit them," Core Security's advisory notes.

Attackers, for example, could send a malicious Lotus 1-2-3 file attachment with a common extension of .jpg or .gif, rather than a MIME Content-type e-mail header.

Big Blue is advising customers to contact IBM support to receive the patch, which is available for Notes 7x and 8x client versions. The company also notes that the security flaws affect only Windows-based Notes clients. Lotus Domino server users are not affected.

Lotus Notes, which includes a combination of e-mail, instant messenger, browser and business collaboration applications, is a desktop client that is designed to work with Lotus Domino. Security researcher Secunia is rating the Lotus Notes vulnerabilities as "highly critical."

IBM is releasing an update today to its free Lotus Symphony productivity suite, which remains in beta testing.

The three desktop applications, Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations, are counterparts to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The latest iteration of Symphony is supposed to be faster than its predecessor, which debuted less than two months ago.

The package is one of several low-cost or free alternatives to Microsoft Office. Unlike products such as ThinkFree, Zoho and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, there is no online component to Symphony.

Like its close competitor, the $79 Sun StarOffice, Symphony works on Windows and Linux computers and saves documents in Microsoft Office formats as well as ODFs and PDFs. But Symphony does not include a database application or e-mail client.

More than one quarter of a million people have downloaded the software to date, according to IBM.

Our first take review details how Symphony worked in CNET's early tests.

An emboldened IBM challenged Microsoft's desktop application dominance with the introduction on Tuesday of IBM Lotus Symphony, a suite of free desktop applications.

Lotus Symphony is made up of three applications--word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs--which IBM already ships as part of Lotus 8.

The offering is in beta and is available as a free download with "community support" from IBM's Web site. IBM is considering other support options, according to a company executive.

Lotus Symphony Documents is IBM's editing software, designed for simplicity and standards support.

(Credit: IBM )

The software is based on the Eclipse open-source framework and natively supports the OpenDocument Format, or ODF, a standard document format derived from the OpenOffice open-source desktop suite.

The applications can also work with Microsoft Office documents and output Adobe PDF documents. People can make templates from existing Office documents, though Office documents with macros and other advanced features will not convert exactly, according to an IBM FAQ.

Significantly, Lotus Symphony will run on both Windows desktop computers and Linux machines. Support for Apple's Mac OS computers is planned.

"IBM is committed to opening office desktop productivity applications, just as we helped open enterprise computing with Linux," Steve Mills, senior vice president of IBM Software Group, said in a statement.

Mills and Mike Rhodin, Lotus' general manager, are hosting a press conference in New York on Tuesday to introduce Lotus Symphony.

IBM last week said it is joining the OpenOffice.org open-source project and will be contributing human resources and code to bolster the project's initiatives, though it did not commit to offering support to business customers who use OpenOffice.

The Lotus Symphony product, to be integrated with other business applications, is designed for simplicity. It is aimed at both end users and business customers.

"It's not about the document on the desktop anymore. It's all about making information universally accessible and putting it to work on any platform and on the Web in highly flexible ways," Mills said in a statement.

IBM has been assembling a strategy for several years to pry away the control that Microsoft has over corporate desktop software.

It launched a desktop software strategy called Workplace, setting development off the Lotus Notes Productivity Tools, which have now cumulatively become Lotus Symphony.

IBM has also invested heavily in Eclipse "rich client" software because it is extensible with plug-ins and can run on different destkop operating systems.

Lotus Symphony is a departure for IBM in that it is offered directly to consumers, as well as business, rather than part of its Lotus collaboration and e-mail software.

On a technical level, Lotus Symphony is "fat client" software. Until now, IBM has favored desktop productivity applications that are managed by a server.