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IBM To Publish Java Office Suite
prostoalex writes "The Big Blue will bundle J2EE-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics applications in its WebSphere portal. What's more interesting is that the package is server-side, with functionality of the application being delivered to the user over the network. Both CRN (linked above) and The Register considered that a major move against MSFT."
Free, 100% Free, when you buy our $580,000 WebSphere Portal software/server combo!
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http://fink.sourceforge.net/
More than "going to" they did it. Word Perfect 8.0 for Java was available, but it didn't do all that well.
Corel probably jumped the gun a little. The thing ran horribly at the time, because bytecode execution was so slow... and the vm's weren't tremendously mature on most platforms, so it wasn't altogether stable. I have a friend who is still using is, and with modern JIT compilers and higher speed computers it really runs like a dream.
Want my opinion? Java version of Word Perfect runs better on Linux than that Wine-enhanced native Linux version they released ever did.
For all practical purposes when I'm at work and the network is down..so am I. That's where the work is stored, that's where we access important information, that's how we communicate.
Even with desktop apps, when the network goes down - we're doing nothing.
I think that people are going to notice that there are other office suites out there... Especially if it comes bundled with the server. I know plenty of people who are tired of the way you have to pay $230+ for MS Office per machine. This definitely is a threat to MS.
Also, I wonder if they will adopt an existing file format, or if they are just going to go on thier own. I would think that people would like it much better, and would be less hesitant to switch to it, if they didn't have to hassle with thier file formats...
I dont think this is quite the same thing. IBM have invested heavily in their Websphere app server technology and this just looks like an attempt to squeeze Weblogic market share. Its more evidence that IBM see Webspere as a platform in and of itself.
It has the convenient side effect of putting the Lotus code base to work instead of sitting around doing nothing and if its well received new markets open on the desktop for IBM.
Personally I dislike Websphere but I think this is very clever idea which will go down well in the corporate sphere.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
If anything, it bodes well for Microsoft, because it gives them another solution to point to as a competitor, dispelling claims about MSOffice being a monopoly.
File formats? Compatible with Office? I doubt it. That means this thing is boat anchor. Either that, or it will join those thousands of boxes of the old Lotus Suite gathering dust in cabinets that companies got for buying Notes.
If there was an award for software distributed that never got used, nobody would ever beat IBM.
If this is tightly integrated with WebSphere, I can see how it would be a benefit to those who have already deployed or decided to deploy WebSphere. But without said tight integration, there's really not much benefit over using OpenOffice or some other freely available office suite. Having the apps served via the network may make it easier to deploy updates, but I still don't believe the suite is going to induce more people to buy Websphere unless it's tightly integrated and truly exceptional relative to other free alternatives.
Because when the network is down you are down, regardless.
Many business, like manufacturing, are so connected to computers that if the computer network goes down then business grinds to a halt.
I've worked in this type of place. It isn't as tough as you think, considering they only worked 2 shifts, leaving 8 hours for maintenance, etc. It isn't 24x7 but more like 16x5.
The biggest issues were desktop apps having problems. Amazing how much that stuff freezes and crashes when people *insist* on having Outlook, IE, Word, Excel, an SNA client (TN 3270) and possibly a CAD viewer (java applet) and maybe an MS Access database or two running all at once.
Believe it or not, Sun has the right idea. Build the network so that it is so reliable it makes the phone and power companies look like slackers. Then move 90+% of the apps back upstream to a professionally-managed & maintained server.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Not really.
It's possible to prevent java code from being decompiled. This can be done using Obfuscation of the code - basically converts the code so that it is more difficult to decompile (but not impossible).
The names of the variables and functions could be changed by such a tool to make it difficult to understand a program - as if it's already not difficult to understand without any comments.
"First it was dumb terminals then network computers and now this. Its dead give it up."
Do you have ANY idea how useful something like this could be to large environments? Where I work, we have 35,000 computers on the supported list. Two or three different platforms worth, PCs, Macs, and some occasional Linux machines. It would be kick ass if we could deploy one version of one productivity suite across the whole network, especially if we could do it with site based central servers rather than having to work on each and every PC on the fucking network.
If this supports server-side file storage, it's even better, since then we don't have to worry about user data any longer. We'll gladly build fault-tolerant servers if we only have to do it for about a hundred machines, and suddenly we can also roll out upgrades to the products with only a few days' work, not months like we currently have to.
The days of dumb terminals rocked. If one broke, we brought another one out, and swapped. If the server broke, we dropped everything and fixed it. Regardless, the user wasn't without a connection or machine for days at a time like which happens in the Windows world. If Microsoft hadn't managed to con everyone into believing that their dumbass standalone workstation idea was the best, we'd probably be using X-Terms now, and have even better centralization of critical data, rather than every user having to know how to copy their data to the network attached storage (and most of them are not interested in learning).
Just because a computing model is old doesn't mean that it's outdated.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Think of servers as a fixed cost and clients as a variable cost. With thin client models you only have to support a browser on the client machines. It is the end to a management headache: all those apps configured on all those clients.
Think about all those companies that are paying big bucks for all of those client OS's and Apps. Now they can get, for less than $200, loaded PC's (1.1 GHz PC w/Linux installed, no monitor).
Walmarts $199.98 PC.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
You have a single point for the software. Maintaining software on several hundred machines is a pain. Even when dealing with homogeneous systems it is a pain. Here, they want to upgrade to the next version - just redo one point.
This seems targeted for the corporate environment.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it