New competitor for Microsoft Office

Before Windows was the operating system of choice a company called Lotus was one of the few software companies that had an office suite running on good old fashioned DOS computers. Sure, Microsoft had a word processor and spreadsheet, but Lotus' Symphony was the forerunner of today's integrated suite of applications.

When Windows arrived, Microsoft still didn't have it all it's own way as Lotus was still king with its new generation SmartSuite, and very good it was too. Its word processor (AmiPro) was just so easy to use, 1-2-3 was the daddy of spreadsheets, Freelance was THE definitive presentation software and Approach was a really excellent database that was both powerful and easy to use - something that Access never has been.

Sadly, Microsoft took over the world and, with it, the office suite market. Well almost; recently the free OpenOffice suite has made in-roads into the market place and I'm sure will continue to do so as Microsoft pushes its Office 2007 which requires so much re-training as to have been shunned by many large corporates.

Well Lotus is back, with a name from the past decorating, what it hopes, will be the office suite of the future - strangely enoufgh called Symphony. Based on OpenOffice, IBM's software arm has come up with an application that bares an uncanny familiarity with previous SmartSuite versions. Being based on OpenOffice we know that it is powerful and file compatible with it's Microsoft competitor. However, whereas Microsoft has tried to re-define the user interface and, we believe, failed, Lotus has stuck with the tried and tested menu system.

What an innovation - using a technology that almost every PC user understands. And for this reason alone, we think Symphony deserves to succeed - it is a credible alternative to Microsoft's offering from one of the biggest names in computing history; Lotus.

Of course, dynanti is offering training courses for Symphony - contact us for further details.