Making Headlines

You don't have to be a Fort Lauderdale computer repair expert to know that software industry graveyards are littered with remains of products that attempted the bold task of challenging the dominance of Microsoft Office.

Some of the tombstones have the letters I,B, and M carved into them - remember SmartSuite? You can still buy it, but almost nobody does.

Yet IBM Corp.'s Michael Rhodin, general manager of the Lotus software division in Westford, Mass., is gearing up for another run at Office.

His vehicle: A free office software alternative called Lotus Symphony.

After all, Lotus' business is collaboration software.

Case in point: its Lotus Notes and Domino products, which help business teams work together from anywhere in the world. But how does that actually relate to word processors and spreadsheets?

The theory: Symphony will help IBM free up millions now being spent on MS Office.

Customers will then spend instead on Lotus Notes and Domino, as well as on an array of collaboration and social networking products unveiled by Lotus over the past year.

In theory.

The new ideas include a product called Lotus Connections, which is designed to create Facebook-like communities for corporate workers.

Many organizations are very structured, and the executive believes that social software breaks down all of those pre-existing barriers.

Lotus is also in the process of heavily pushing Quickr, a system for building workspaces where teams can share ideas and documents.

Continue reading this article in the Boston Globe ...