IBM Release Free Office Software

Businesses keen to keep costs down might be interested to know that yesterday IBM launched a suite of free software tools…
Small Business News – 19th September 2007
Businesses keen to keep costs down might be interested to know that yesterday IBM launched a suite of free software tools under the name Lotus Symphony, free desktop software for creating & sharing documents, presentations and spreadsheets.
The suite of software is based upon the Open Document Format (ODF) standard meaning that users are not tied to proprietary file formats, license agreements & upgrades.
The Lotus Symphony suite is designed to handle the majority of typical everyday office tasks and can import a number of file formats, including Microsoft Office documents and export files to PDF, Adobe’s popular cross-platform Portal Document Format.
The suite comprises three main pieces of software:
- Lotus Symphony Documents, a word processing tool.
- Lotus Symphony Presentations for graphic slideshows
- Lotus Symphony Spreadsheet
Lotus Symphony is compatible with Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms with plans for an Apple Mac version in the near future.