November 8, 2004
(Computerworld)
Sun doesn't need to wait for any agreements with Microsoft to make its StarOffice desktop applications more compatible with Microsoft Office. And the level of compatibility is expected to increase in a new StarOffice version that's due next year.
The StarOffice code is largely developed by OpenOffice.org, a group that Sun formed in 2000 to create an open-source version of the software suite, which the company had acquired when it bought a German vendor a year earlier. OpenOffice.org plans to release Version 2.0 of its namesake applications in March with improved Office interoperability features, and Sun will quickly follow with a similar release of StarOffice, called Version 8, said officials from the two organizations.
Sun says there is a growing number of StarOffice adopters in Europe and Asia. But in the U.S., use by large commercial enterprises remains limited, said Gartner Inc. analyst Michael Silver. Two years ago, Gartner estimated that StarOffice had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of taking 10% of the office productivity suite market in the U.S. from Microsoft by the end of this year. But Silver last week estimated that StarOffice's market share is still somewhere in the "low single digits."
Silver said users don't want mixed environments running OpenOffice or StarOffice along with Word and other Microsoft applications. A product that can unseat Office isn't going to sell itself on file format compatibility or lower total cost of ownership, he said, adding that what's needed is something "that really takes us to a whole other level of how users get their work done."
The city of Largo, Fla., deployed OpenOffice one year ago to about 500 employees who use thin clients connected to a Linux server that runs a single copy of the software. "OpenOffice will cover just about anything you want to do," said Largo CIO Harold Shoemaker.
He added that the open-source alternative supports the majority of imported Office files except for documents or spreadsheets with Visual Basic macros, which don't operate on Linux. But Visual Basic issues aren't frequent for Largo's end users, Shoemaker said. One other problem he cited is that OpenOffice doesn't read PowerPoint applications well.
In terms of OpenOffice's cost, Shoemaker said the city "didn't have to buy it" but did have to invest in user training. But there would have been training expenses no matter what product Largo officials decided to use, he said.
OpenOffice.org is improving its software's interoperability with Office in an effort to appeal to users who "want something that can replace, fairly seamlessly, the main things that Microsoft Office is used for," said Louis Suarez-Potts, a senior community development manager at CollabNet Inc. in Brisbane, Calif. CollabNet supplies OpenOffice's development platform, and Suarez-Potts chairs the open-source group's Community Council.
While StarOffice shares the same code base with OpenOffice, Sun includes technical support as well as enterprisewide management and security features designed for corporate users, said Manish Punjabi, group marketing manager for the two products.
—Patrick Thibodeau
Planned Features
The OpenOffice and StarOffice upgrades will include these enhancements:
Improved bulleting, numbering and table compatibility with Word
More similarities between Office and Impress, the software’s PowerPoint equivalent
Faster application loading
Support for XML file format standards developed by OASIS