Office Rivals: Can Anyone Dethrone Microsoft Office?

However, the dilemma for solution providers is how does one dethrone Microsoft and generate additional revenue opportunities with competing products?

The first piece of ammunition comes in the form of cost: Historically, MS Office has been an expensive suite. At $399 for the standard edition and $100 more for the professional edition, it usually costs hundreds of dollars more than competing suites. While the initial cost factor has been mitigated somewhat by bundled offerings from tier-one PC manufacturers, it still holds true that upgrades and optional features add significant expense to those on the MS Office bandwagon.

That becomes a factor for small businesses looking to equip their desktop PCs with an office package; in many cases, the bundled version of MS Office lacks all the bells and whistles found in the retail version of the product, forcing those users to pursue the upgrade path.

Another factor is the upgrade dilemma. Microsoft is poised to release a new version of Office, dubbed Office 12, which promises to change the look and feel of the product, not to mention how the product will be used. First indications are that the new version will be easier to use than previous versions, but there still will be a period of adjustment, or learning curve, for users.

That can create an opportunity. If a customer has to purchase and learn a new office suite, why does it have to be Microsoft&s? The key here is that it doesn&t. The alternative products on the market can mean real savings, while creating new training and integration opportunities for solution providers.

To pursue this path, solution providers will need to understand feature for feature what these alternative products offer and how they compare against Microsoft&s. So, the CRN Test Center took a detailed look at the three primary MS Office competitors: Sun Microsystem&s Star Office, Evermore Software&s EIOffice and Corel&s WordPerfect Office 12. Each of these offers compatibility with Microsoft&s file formats and employs similar menu structures and terminology that should ease cross-platform transition. Now, how do they stack up?

EIOffice 2004
Evermore Software, based in Wuxi City, China, set out to redefine what an office suite is all about; the result was Evermore Integrated Office 2004, commonly marketed as EIOffice 2004. Built completely in Java, EIOffice boasts seamless compatibility with both Windows and Linux operating systems. (Macintosh and Solaris versions are on the way.) Recognizing ease of use as a key element, Evermore decided to mimic the menus found in MS Office to make the transition from MS Office to EIOffice that much easier.

While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, beyond the menu similarities, EIOffice proves to be a significantly different product in many ways.

First off, EIOffice is a single application, not a suite of various applications such as a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program. Simply put, when you start EIOffice, a single application is launched, from which you can control all text, worksheets, slides, presentations, charts, tables and graphs using standard menus and icons. That singular view allows users to work with one document, regardless of the content. In other words, a single document can house all of EIOffice&s component features, a spreadsheet can be embedded in the same document as text or a presentation and so on.

This style of information presentation allows searches, indexing, updating and organization to occur across all user-created files, regardless of content. What&s more, cutting and pasting data elements across documents could not be any easier, thanks to the single file format and interface.

Evermore&s approach to office organization could prove to simplify file management. Evermore has taken the single file approach even further by leveraging a proprietary technology that it calls DOORs, which allows synchronized updating of master documents whenever any data is changed. For example, if the same spreadsheet is imbedded in several master documents, a change to the data will cascade across all the documents. This is a nifty feature for those building documents or reports based upon budget or inventory type information.

EIOffice uses a concept called binders to organize documents; a user creates a binder to act as a holding place for a group of master documents, which allows the product to work in a project-centric fashion. All information can be organized in a logical manner, and the ambiguous nature of the traditional “my documents” folder commonly used with MS Office is eliminated. What&s more, the binder approach eliminates the need for a user to understand folders or directory structures and brings a commonality to file management across both Windows and Linux platforms.

The overall requirements for running EIOffice 2004 are comparatively slight—Evermore claims the product will run adequately on a 1.3GHz Pentium 4 and requires only 256 Mbytes of RAM and 350 Mbytes of hard disk space.

In practice, EIOffice offers a surprising look and feel, mimicking MS Office so well that some users will barely be able to tell the difference. The product seemed to have very little trouble converting and saving files in Microsoft- compatible formats, the one exception being the presentation portion of the product, which does not offer the robustness found in Microsoft&s Power Point, thus limiting compatibility.

Overall, EIOffice proves to be a good choice for users seeking only word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities. Those who also need database or e-mail capabilities will have to look elsewhere. EIOffice retails for $149 per user, and volume discounts are available for authorized partners.

Sun StarOffice 8:
With the September release of Sun StarOffice 8, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems hopes to bring a viable alternative to MS Office to the table. Sun has taken a new approach to bringing an office suite to customers. The company studied the feature set offered by MS Office and came up with what is called an 80-20 rule; translated, that means 80 percent of users employ only 20 percent of the features offered. That assessment fueled Sun to focus on perfecting the major features, or 20 percent, of an office suite. There is no doubt that Sun has clearly set its sights on competing with Microsoft in the office suite market by offering 80 percent of users the features they need at a fraction of the cost of MS Office. A five-user version of StarOffice 8 retails for $99.95.

With its eye on Microsoft, Sun has built impressive compatibility into StarOffice 8 for working with MS Office-generated files. StarOffice also can import 80 percent of MS Office&s macros, making the transition even easier. StarOffice includes the requisite word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications; a database is included as well.

The look and feel of StarOffice is similar to MS Office, with menus and terminology that reflect what users have come to expect from MS Office. StarOffice also bundles in an extensive set of wizards that further ease the transition over to the Sun product. Included is the capability to directly create PDF files, normally an add-on when it comes to MS Office.

One important feature found in StarOffice is support for the Open Artwork System Interchange Standard (OASIS), a new file format. It builds on XML technology to create an open-standards-based file format that allows documents to move seamlessly between various office applications. OASIS will become more valuable as software vendors adopt the standard. The standard promises to allow users to open documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the office suite of their choice and not be tied to a proprietary file format. Adding to that cross-vendor compatibility is the fact that StarOffice is available for Windows, Linux and Solaris, which, when combined with the OASIS standard, makes the product operating-system agnostic.

Users will find StarOffice quite straightforward to use. The interface proves to be intuitive and offers wizards for creating letters, documents, agendas, spreadsheets, presentations and several other types of content. Moving documents between StarOffice and MS Office is eased by a document analysis tool, a professional analysis wizard and a macro migration tool.

Sun&s StarOffice 8 does a good job of covering the basics and includes enough features to meet the needs of all but the most advanced users. Although StarOffice is available at an attractive price, it may not meet the needs of the seasoned MS Office user; the lack of an integrated e-mail client and the limited nature of the bundle may put off some users. That said, StarOffice 8 still is an excellent alternative to Microsoft&s lower-end products, such as Microsoft Works, and may very well be the ideal suite for white-box builders to bundle on custom systems.

Sun&s Star Office shows additional promise, due to the recent announcement that Sun and Google will be working together to cross develop software. The immediate benefit will be the inclusion of Google&s advance search technology into Star Office, which should help to speed up data searches and help to better organize unruly data directories.

Corel WordPerfect Office 12
In the days of DOS, WordPerfect ruled supreme and enjoyed a commanding market share. As the product changed owners—from WordPerfect Corp. to Novell to Corel—WordPerfect lost market share to Microsoft Word. The emergence of Windows as the operating system of choice put the final nail into WordPerfect&s coffin. Or did it?

When Corel took ownership of WordPerfect, it revitalized the product and bundled other acquisitions (Borland&s Quattro Pro spreadsheet and a presentation program) to build an office suite. While the first iterations of Corel&s office product showed a lack of cross-program integration and inconsistent interfaces, subsequent releases improved upon those limitations. Now referred to as Corel WordPerfect Office 12, the product&s ease of use and integration capabilities are nothing less than impressive.

But the question remains: Can WordPerfect Office 12 replace MS Office? The short answer is yes, but with several reservations.

While the product offers a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package, which covers the major bases of an office suite, WordPerfect Office 12 still lacks some of the integration and look-and-feel pieces found in MS Office.

With that in mind, Corel has put extensive work into guiding potential users through the transition from MS Office over to WordPerfect Office. Most notable is Corel&s workspace manager, a front end that allows the various applications to mimic Microsoft&s interfaces, giving an MS Office look and feel to the Corel product by populating the interface with MS Office toolbars. While that may help to speed the transition, most MS Office users will leave this feature enabled, instead of choosing to learn the Corel native interface. This will help them get their basic tasks done, but will also “hide” many of the advanced native features found in Corel&s suite.

Users can choose to forgo the workspace manager&s alternate interfaces and just go native to ease that transition; a user can create additional toolbars that mimic some of the basic functions found in MS Office. Corel also offers an innovative file-translation tool, which allows easy importing and exporting of MS Office format files. The import and export capabilities work well enough to allow users to interact across platforms.

Despite the differences between Corel&s WordPerfect Office 12 and MS Office, users will find the Corel applications intuitive and easy to adapt to. Corel&s toolset allows users to completely customize the interface to work most efficiently for a given individual. In other words, users can group their interface preferences into custom toolbars and menus to improve efficiency. Furthering universal appeal is a native PDF driver, so all documents can be published to an Acrobat PDF format to create Web-portable, high-quality images. This capability is an add-on, extra-cost option for MS Office.

Simply put, Corel WordPerfect Office 12 can meet MS Office feature for feature when it comes to word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities. Corel&s office suite proves to be quite robust, even though it is significantly different when used in native mode. Corel should also be commended for providing extensive documentation and tools to help ease the transition from MS Office. That said, if from the outset Corel had designed WordPerfect Office as an MS Office clone, that documentation and toolset would not be necessary.

Corel&s place in the market seems to be ideal for new users and those transitioning from previous versions of office suites other than MS Office. Those finally making the leap from a DOS version of WordPerfect should find this Corel office suite offering quite satisfying.

Corel WordPerfect Office 12 retails for $349, but upgraders can get it for $149.