Is IBM Being Realistic In Its Switch To Lotus?
One half of me can totally understand IBM wanting its employees to simply use software being offered by the company over using Microsoft’s. Sadly, however, it seems that IBM’s powers that be might have not thought things out all that well here.
First of all, migrating advanced spreadsheets using various macros over to something non-MS based is a nightmare. This is not saying one product is better or worse, just that switching with existing documents in play is going to be really messy.
Then there is the fact that if MS software is already paid for, why break what is not broken? I am sorry, but Symphony is not providing any definable advantage over MS Office or OpenOffice based on my experience. It’s slower than both of the previous suites and it is really not offering anything so compelling that making IBM employees switch will see a gain on productivity.
4 Comments
JonathanPDX
September 16th, 2009
at 9:27am
Symphony and Lotus are STILL around? Wow! Sounds like waking the dead. I remember Lotus 1-2-3 was phenomenal in its time, but that Neanderthal died out when Excel reared its pointy little head.
Rather than muddying the waters, it would be nice if IBM used its considerable clout to get MS and OO to refine their products to actually work better.
Is Lotus Nuts, I mean Notes still around, too?
KyleOrbit
September 17th, 2009
at 4:52am
IBM’s 2 biggest mistakes:
1. Stopping development on OS/2
2. Continuing development on Lotus
James
September 17th, 2009
at 9:05am
Yes, we use Lotus Notes here at Raytheon haha :p
Manny d.
October 12th, 2009
at 8:25pm
maybe now IBM will get on the ball and instead of sitting on their butts while Microsoft plowed through with their software and made it the standard in the office. Lotus Software suites were damn good but IBM bought the company and then proceeded to kinda shelve the product that was one of the leading office softwares of its time.