Information Week: Lotus Symphony: Polish And Finesse

December 10 2008

More Symphony good news in the IT press...

Also derived from the OpenOffice.org codebase, but to very different ends, IBM Lotus Symphony was recently introduced as a rejuvenation of the Lotus Symphony brand name. It's much less broad than OpenOffice.org itself -- there's only three major applications in the suite -- but there's also been that much more attention paid to each individual app. The whole suite also has a bit more polish and finesse to it, possibly because the range of applications is that much narrower to begin with.  ...

IBM's clearly intended Symphony to be a starting point and a framework for further development, both in synchrony with OpenOffice and apart from it. One good example of this is the plugins available for Symphony -- they're patterned after the plugin system in OpenOffice.org as well, but the available plugins are entirely different and it doesn't appear that plugins from OpenOffice.org can be used in Symphony or vice versa. There also aren't as many plugins available for Symphony but a few of them look truly useful, such as one that exports presentations to standalone Flash files.
The review appears in an overall article covering alternatives to MS Office, both OpenOffice derivatives and otherwise.

Link: Information Week: Lotus Symphony: Polish And Finesse > (Thanks, Domenic and Angela)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus Symphony  Add/View Comments [12]

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  1. 1  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 12/10/2008 6:43:37 PM

    Very hard to say if I agree or not, as Serdar Yegulalp's writing is almost impossible to decipher.

  1. 2  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 12/10/2008 7:17:17 PM

    The first sentence is the most important one:

    Bit by bit, the Microsoft monopoly on office productivity applications is receding -- and one of the most important ways this is happening is through the proliferation of open source productivity suites.

    With more and more article on Symphony and the others, the more people will start think about making the switch.

  1. 3  Nazeer Aval http://www.sbm.com.sa | 12/10/2008 11:02:58 PM

    i agree but still a lot of enhancements and performance fine tuning is required. Is there any way to upgrade internal Notes 8.0.2 Symphony alone to latest symphony version??

  1. 4  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 12/11/2008 12:30:20 AM

    @3 - I completely agree with your statement, but I view this as a very long road to travel and their rate of speed is gaining exponentially at this point. Look at where Symphony was just one year ago and where it is today. For a "1.x" product, not bad at all. Imagine where the product will be this time next year.

    I think 2009 could be a good year for Lotus Symphony. The economic slowdown is going to have organizations of all stripes looking for all sorts of ways to cut costs. This is one such option.

    My hope is that a few very recognizable organizations make a very public switch, which will start getting a lot of other people thinking.

  1. 5  Heiko Voigt http://www.sit.de/heikos-blog | 12/11/2008 3:08:37 AM

    For me one of the comments to this article is the most interesting part, take a look what "Guest" has to say about why he can't use any of the named Office replacements. Maybe that's a point to hook into with Domino / Quickr / Symphony.

  1. 6  Gerry Shappell  | 12/11/2008 7:17:08 AM

    As a lotus dev...I try to spread the word in my own way about lotus products (that I believe are good). I have told some friends/family members to give Symphony a shot as an alternative to paying Microsoft a fee for tons of features you will probably never use. I also usually mention Open Office as an alternative, since I have used that suite for a few years. I have later learned of two parties who went to Open Office. Was it because of a better product or better marketing? Nope. In fact they both tried to proceed with Symphony first. However, one person was turned off by the fact that you MUST register to download a free product and the other found the registration form quite frustrating. Just an FYI as not everyone is computer savy...make it easier to get the product.

  1. 7  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 12/11/2008 7:35:16 AM

    @6 I can't see how the registration form would be frustrating...the "guest" registration asks for essentially name, e-mail address, and country and has two tick boxes. That's it. We're not looking at doing away with the registration process, but it is true that we allow others to redistribute the Symphony installer without having to register on ibm.com.

  1. 8  Kerr  | 12/11/2008 8:46:19 AM

    @7, maybe it's the performance that is frustrating. I just went and tried. First the guest sign in page timed out 5 times before it finally displayed. Now it's chugging away after I submitted the form.

    3 Minutes and counting...

    5 Minutes... OK, if I was just a user looking to try this out, I'd have got bored and left by now.

    7 Minutes... So while I'm still waiting I should mention that it still prompted be to sign in with my IBM id or as a guest even though I was already logged in. I hate that.

    9.5 Minutes... And after all that I get a network error!

    openoffice.org. Download... 30 Secs and I'm 15 MB into the download.

  1. 9  Gerry Shappell  | 12/11/2008 8:51:21 AM

    @7 - I don't remember the process when I downloaded my copy, so I am assuming it wasn't very difficult. Just stating what I was told. Whether it was difficult to you or me or whether we think it was difficult is irrelevant. I may take a look at it again to see what may have been the issue.

  1. 10  Gerry Shappell  | 12/11/2008 9:20:09 AM

    @8 - That may have been the case, i'll have to talk to them to get specifics. I didn't really have a hard time (one timeout). They may have been confused/frustrated by the amount of clicks to get to what they wanted. And lets face it, IBM web pages aren't known for their ease of use/usability(although it seems as though they are getting a little better). Like Kerr alluded to, the openoffice.org page was basic and easy to start the process. Also, I wonder if registration couldn't be moved to post/during installation. Seems like the main goal would be to get the product in the hands of the user and then you can get people on your marketing list after that.

  1. 11  Joachim Haller  | 12/23/2008 2:56:11 PM

    Hi,

    Why is IBM Symphony only version 1.4 of OpenOffice when 3.0 is the real deal with PDF create/convert/edit/save among many other features.

    For us it makes not sense to roll out an old version to the whole company. Our IBM contact confirmed that 3.0 will not be used until end of 2009 (earliest)...

    Yours

    //Joachim