Flow My Thoughts, The IT Professor Said

Rising Star

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1490486,00.asp

A review of Sun's STAR OFFICE v.7 suite which competes with Microsoft's version for a considerably lower price [at least 20% of the cost of OFFICE on an individual licence basis, and nearly 1/3 of that in buys of 10,000 ore more] with considerably more latitude on which machines each copy can be installed, which comes up with a strongly favourable verdict.

The key here is that while usability, capability, performace, manageability, scalability, and security are all rated "good", interoperability is rated "excellent". The only caveat is for those organizations with a lot of VBA [and I would expect, .NET as well] applications integration, who will not be able to make the switch away from Microsoft without considerable pain.

There are two things worth noting about this:
1) There may be a high and hidden cost to using Microsoft development tools, particularly to implement application integration and automation, because you are locking yourself into a monopoly which is clearly out to extract the top dollar possible; and
2) Many of the organizations which will be least affected by such considerations fall in the small/medium/home office category -- this is a large aggregate market which should have every reason to switch rather than fighting, and this is a market which Microsoft has treated and contintues to treat with less than tender loving care. There is a marketing opportunity there [of course, IBM, no mean marketers themselves, got shot down in flames over OS/2, so that is in itself no guarantee] -- one wonders who will take advantage, or if advantage will be taken.