Information Week: IBM Sees 100,000 Lotus Symphony Downloads In First Week

September 26 2007

As I speculated...

IBM said Wednesday that the beta version of its free Lotus Symphony productivity software has been downloaded more than 100,000 times since the company made it available on the Internet a week ago.

IBM said the number represents a record for software downloaded from its Web site. To boot, the part of the company's site that hosts the software has been visited more than 1 million times during the same period, according to IBM.
and that 100,000 wasn't calculated by multiplying 77.1 * 850....

Link: Information Week: IBM Sees 100,000 Lotus Symphony Downloads In First Week >

Ed Brill | Grand Rapids, MI USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [19]

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  1. 1  Grant Lindsay  | 9/26/2007 12:41:09 PM

    "and that 100,000 wasn't calculated by multiplying 77.1 * 850"

    Okay, Ed. That made me laugh out loud, for real. And I sit in a cube farm. How embarrassing.

    :)

  1. 2  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 9/26/2007 1:04:24 PM

    100,000+ downloaders can't be bad, its the million that visited and the ones who didn't download which is much more interesting to me.

    900,000+ interested people(press, microsoft, google, sun, hp included)makes one realize that maybe there is a larger world of Lotus people and/or people that want an alternative to office.

    You can read it a million ways :-) but I would hope there were more than 100,000 R8 downloads in beta or now at the trial site.

    Otherwise we have the makings of an IBM Consumer Plan being hatched. And if we don't, maybe we should expand on one?

  1. 3  Ed Brill  http://www.edbrill.com | 9/26/2007 1:18:35 PM

    Keith, I assume 1 million visits <> 1 million people but rather multiple visits (to the forums etc) by the same person...which means the site is sticky, so that's good.

  1. 4  Steven  | 9/26/2007 2:08:49 PM

    OK, how ironic is that? The Infoweek URL Ed posted appaers to be broken, but if you go to the main Infoweek page, you then "get" math Ed's joke!!!

  1. 5  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/26/2007 2:47:18 PM

    That's twice this week I've had a problem with case-sensitivity in a posted URL. I will contact the blog software developer :-)

  1. 6  One Lotus Developer http://onelotusdeveloper.blogspot.com | 9/26/2007 3:04:49 PM

    Hahaha... For those who didn't get the joke from Ed (I am one of them), read this link

    { Link }

    This is pretty funny.

  1. 7  Curt Stone http://www.curtsisland.com | 9/26/2007 4:35:49 PM

    If I could make a suggestion. The news and announcements on Lotus.com do not stand out. They're buried at the bottom of the home page in small print and I didn't even notice them till I took a second look. I actually did a search on Symphony to try and find the announcement/download page. The top graphic appears to me as announcements so I didn't venture further. If it were up to me, I'd have the news before the products and a bigger box.

    Anyway, keep the good news coming!

  1. 8  Bill Malchisky  | 9/26/2007 5:20:41 PM

    I wonder if I can divide 100k by 850 to get 77.1? Could be helpful with my taxes..."But Mr. IRS Auditor, I used Excel...the *same* tool you have." :)

  1. 9  Bill Malchisky  | 9/26/2007 5:22:59 PM

    Congrats on a successful week first week. Was in NYC last week. Good buzz at the show and for the product. Exciting in-deed. Got my external team using it now, b/c Word doesn't create PDFs...a sticking point for them.

  1. 10  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 9/26/2007 5:36:19 PM

    It would be nice to see the marketing team do some quick demographic studies to see who / what is downloading the software. Size of company? Company type? Main reasons for trying it? Nothing crazy, just some basics.

    How long until someone finds an easter egg? I wonder if it will have a screen-shot or some other reference to the original Lotus Symphony.

  1. 11  David Bell  | 9/26/2007 9:20:39 PM

    ..."The key here is that the issue is actually not in the calculation itself (the result of the calculation stored in Excel's memory is correct), but only in the result that is shown in the sheet,"...

    If this is true, then how come (77.1 * 850)+1 is incorrect and (77.1 * 850)-1 is correct ?

  1. 12  Sean Jennings  | 9/27/2007 6:39:30 AM

    I trust Microsoft will be revising their OOXML specification so that 77.1 * 850 = 100,000

    (I believe they've done something similar with Excel leap-years...)

    or maybe Microsoft have stumbled upon the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?... though I thought that was supposed to be 7 * 8 =42

  1. 13  Curt Stone http://www.curtsisland.com | 9/27/2007 8:25:52 AM

    @9

    It's interesting that one simple feature can influence a software decision. You mention the pdf conversion which I can see can be huge. I remember when I was using Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Approach(database). MS Excel had better import capabilities and this was huge for me at the time. In Lotus Approach, I was experiencing pain with the way the software handled indexes. My move to Excel and Access was primarily based on these two features/reasons.

    For Symphony, free is key but the incompatability of MS products is a source of pain. Simple example: A friend at church couldn't read a MS Word attachment. I told him to send it to me. I used NeoOffice (I have a iMac) to translate. This simple situation outweighs any feature they could build in MS Word.

  1. 14  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 9/27/2007 8:56:19 AM

    @13 did you send that word document in to support Curt? That is the only way they can improve the filters. That being said, I have been using the editors as my primary word processor and spreadsheet and have had no major issues. I am curious what is in that word document that gave Symphony issues.

  1. 15  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/27/2007 9:29:15 AM

    @15 - I got my new Thinkpad about 6 months ago. No Office product has EVER been installed on it.

    I have a secondary system that I use from time to time that is pure SLED10. No Microsoft product whatsoever has been installed on that machine.

    And I work with .doc and .xls files all the time.

  1. 16  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 9/27/2007 9:53:07 AM

    I received this press release but did not post it for one reason that Ed cut out. For some bizarre reason they put down another product, Lotus Notes actually, by saying Symphony has the record number of downloads IBM has seen. I thought the numbers were impressive enough without calling out it beat Lotus Notes. Weird marketing to say one product is downloaded more than another of your own products.

    I am glad to see this alternative out there, however, before the hounds are released on me. Symphony has the chance to make some SMB impact. Add in some Quickr and Lotus Connections ability and then you start seeing the value add.

  1. 17  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 9/27/2007 10:17:16 AM

    @16 - ???

    "The download figure is a record for IBM software, surpassing the previous record held by Lotus Notes, IBM's most widely-used product, with 135 million licensed users."

    Sounds flattering to Notes to me. Particularly the "most widely-used product" line. (Which I've been pointing out for years.)

  1. 18  Curt Stone http://www.curtsisland.com | 9/27/2007 6:28:46 PM

    @14 John

    I've yet to download Symphony on my work laptop. I use an iMac for home and Symphony is not ready for Mac yet. NeoOffice is the Mac version of OpenOffice. So, I didn't have an issue with Symphony. Sorry if this was confusing.

    NeoOffice did the trick.

  1. 19  Ian White http://www.ianwhite.net | 9/28/2007 6:11:38 PM

    Ed, don't worry about calculation errors, try this { Link } for the sort of MS support you can only dream about