Office package from IBM: 100,000 downloads for the first week

3rd October 2007

Quite a successful start was taken by the office open-source distribution kit based on OpenOffice from IBM. A week after its release IBM reported that beta version of the Symphony had been downloaded more than 100,000 times. "Frankly speaking, we were surprised at the speed with which people fell upon the product," said Mike Rhodin, manager of IBM Lotus and Collaboration Software department. Originally, to download the beta it was necessary to provide information about yourself to get a special downloading password. Later, IBM has simplified the process of downloading, having made necessary only to specify a working e-mail address. Symphony is said to have been intended not only just as an attempt to produce an alternative to Microsoft Office, but also to promote ODF format, which was adopted as an international standard by the ISO organization.
IBM Symphony Office package consists of applications Documents Lotus Symphony, Lotus Symphony Presentations and Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, which respectively allow word processing, working with tables and presentations. The site of the project gives anyone an opportunity to take advantage of flash tours, which can get you pretty familiar with each component this office package.