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StarOffice 8 May Be MS Office Killer
UltimaGuy wrote to mention an eWeek article that seemed topical, given the recent discussions about the OpenDocument format. They're running a piece discussing StarOffice 8's killer position as an alternative to Office. From the article: "However, whether StarOffice 8 can succeed as a wholesale or partial replacement for Microsoft Office will depend on the organization thinking about making the switch. Several improvements in StarOffice 8 are aimed directly at improving compatibility with Microsoft Office-formatted documents, but converting complex documents between the two suites' formats will in some cases require tweaking to preserve document appearance. In addition, while StarOffice 8 can be extended through macros and scripting, much like Microsoft Office can, these extensions won't migrate to Microsoft Office without being rewritten. However, StarOffice ships with a Macro Migration wizard that will aid in the migration of Microsoft Visual Basic macros to the StarOffice Basic macro language. There's also a Document Analysis wizard that helps determine where trouble spots might lie in the transition to a StarOffice format."
Same headline as usual I see. Everything "may" kill the leading product, but the chances of it happening are slim to none. The reason they're the leading product is the average person trusts them, the average person has no idea what star office is and won't care. If they're lucky they'll get 10% market share, if they arn't they'll llive for a few years and then die hopelessly.
I like muppets.
Companies will keep their installed versions of Office and won't even care of upgrading to Office 12 ?
I like competition, in fact I like it alot (go Yankess!). Anyway, no single program is going to kill MS Office. Or any MS product as widely used as Office. Maybe a second version, maybe a third but it is going to take time.
There are just too many people using it (MS Office) right now, and as we all know people can't handle change. This might be the start of the downfall of MS Office but it is in no way the killer.
First they need to get popular. Then that popularity needs to spread among Information Services people. Businesses need to show an appreciation for the product and want to share that appreciation. They will tell others businesses and that will spread the word.
But programs like this need to learn how to walk before they can run with the big dog.
Spreadsheet? Wrong! OK, I love OpenOffice 2.0 beta, but Calc is a hopelessly worthless piece of junk for anyone doing any serious analysis or report creation using spreadsheets. And yes, people, a SQL report looks like utter shit compared to a chart with bright colors for the executives your reports go out to in the end. "DataPilot" is not something some college kid can just sit down and code in a couple of evenings, and it shows from how useless and difficult to use it is in OpenOffice compared to Excel's PivotTables and PivotCharts.
If only I had time to help make some massive improvements to DataPilot I would, but I simply don't right now. And I would feel like helping because DataPilot sucks, and they need some business analysts with programming abilities to show them what kind of power really needs to be there for people like me to fully switch to OOo2 or SO8.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Come on, they've been calling it an MS Office killer since it's release. It's not going to kill MS Office, especially when it's ability to read office doucments.
You guys need to understand, "open standards" mean squat to the users, they are only important to the techie types. Most people are NOT looking for an alternative to MS Office and aren't not going to be swayed with out something really amazing
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StarOffice I don't think will kill MS Office. However, OpenOffice.org 2.0 if the marketting is done right could be what Firefox 1.0 was. It could bring a good amount of MS Office users over. OOo 1.x didn't do it because it was missing too much stuff. The interface was very different than MSOffice, many features didn't exist, and file compatibility was poor. All this has been corrected, and with a good amount of marketting and press coverage it could be huge.
I am going to tell you something: MS Office WILL fall. So will Windows. History tells us it will happen. The only questions are when and how.
It's a safe bet that "when" is not anytime in the near future, so "several" to "many" years soonest. So is StarOffice 8 an MSOffice killer? No. And Sun knows that. So on to the "how."
What they hope to do is get into just a few businesses. Openoffice.org for the home, StarOffice at work. They will get better at compatibility. They will get the name out there. Empires don't topple in a millisecond. It takes chinks in the armor. Google is a chink. Firefox is a chink. AIM is a chink. Linux is a chink. And StarOffice wants to be one too. None of them was a threat 5 years ago. Now they are all forces to be reckoned with. Anyone trivializing the role of StarOffice needs only think back a few years ago and remember what these other things were then.
- Mozilla mostly sucked; there was no Firefox.
- Google was the best search engine, but was definitely not the main one: Yahoo, Hotbot, and Alta Vista ruled.
- AIM - actually, all of IM - was barely used. Only ICQ was really established.
- Linux was still 2.2 and was pretty much unusable by non-techies.
StarOffice 8 may not be the nail in the coffin, but it IS significant. It's the first useable drop in replacement with commercial backing. And in a few years, we'll see where it's at. If that's not news, I don't know what is.
Please offer some proof to backup this claim. All versions of office can open documents saved by a previous version as far as I know. I'm willing to change my mind if you can give some good solid proff though. An example of proof would be a document saved under word 97 that can't be opened correctly under a newer version of Word.
The bottom line is: Star Office can never beat MS Office, because it emulates MS Office. To send MSWord and PowerPoint to their well-deserved place on the ash heap of history, will take a replacement that shoots higher. It's not good enough to match the MS Office feature set and be cheaper. The cost of the software is trivial, compared to the lock-in that comes from familiarity alone.
For an Open-source office replacement to kill MS, the word processor has to be better than Pages and InDesign combined. The presentation program has to be better than Keynote. The spreadsheet has to be better than Lotus Improv. Not better by a little bit, either: they have to completely blow MS's products away. They have to make the deficiencies of MS's products glaringly obvious to anyone who spends a couple of minutes comparing them.
Until the Star Office guys aim that high, they won't make a dent in the monopoly.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think the biggest mistake os StarOffice/OpenOffice is not supporting Mac OS X out of the box. A package that is supported on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris (I work for Sun
StarOffice and OpenOffice or AnyotherKindofOfficeClone won't replace Office so long as their major selling point is compatibility with Office. If someone is looking for their first bundle of office applications, then StarOffice has a chance. But, why would existing, satisfied, MSOfifice users spend cash to replace Office with something whose claim to fame is that it is (almost) compatible with Office? Why endure the hassle of running macros and conversion programs to convince StarOffice to digest your MSOffice documents when you already have MSOffice to do that job quite nicely, without the conversions and the macros.
Anything that has a chance to replace MSOffice needs to deliver capabilities that are an order of magnitude better, and it needs to inundate the marketplace with shiny shrinkwrapped boxes.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
MS Office has evolved well beyond a simple suite of Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation software.
I'm no fan of MS but I can recognize that the office package is much more than just the programs. The major program used by most businesses is Outlook in combination with MS Windows Server 2k3 as a domain controller. People use outlook and exchange because they work with other things, like the Blackberry server software (which, if you can believe it, is even more unstable than exchange.)
I love open source and use it whenever possible. The problem with MS stuff is that everyone uses it, it's compatible with software from other vendors, and there are a lot of programs built on top of it. If you don't have full Outlook compatability (including calendars, address book, etc. because all these things are stored on the exchange server) then nobody will seriously use your software, point blank. The open source alternatives do not (no, they don't, I have several people at my office who try to use them and they don't work right; calendars get out of sync, address books get wiped, etc.)
You're not going to beat MS at their own game. Their marketroids are very good at convincing CTOs they need the latest and greatest MS product, and if you use them as the products are supposed to be used, they work well enough. SharePoint is already the most popular corporate intranet platform, and it's integrated with Office as well. Office is a client/server package, and if you want to replace MS Office, you have to be compatible with the server.
The fact that SatrOffice does not run for the Mac shows the weakness of the product. Mac zealots are easy picking for an Office competitor. That's why Microsoft makes a version of Office for the Mac, they know that's a possible leakage point. Sun seem to be clueless about this. Nobody seem to realize the combination of two things. How many things really take hold when they are release for Mac (USB ports, Mp3 players, Music downloads (legal ones), etc) and how much companies like Microsoft realizes this... If the competitors don't see it, Microsoft can (and does!) get away with a half-baked effort.