• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 18, 2007 11:45 AM

International Business Machines is launching a software package called Symphony that includes a word processor to rival Word, a spreadsheet to go up against Excel and business-presentation software as an alternative to PowerPoint. It can be downloaded free of charge on the Internet.

IBM's latest move is aimed chiefly at boosting its Notes software, which includes email and instant messaging, as a rival to Microsoft's Outlook email software. Symphony also will be available free in the latest edition of Notes, which has 135 million users. IBM says it will provide support for Symphony, but it hasn't determined price.

By introducing Symphony in an internationally recognized information-display standard called the Open Document Format, IBM also hopes to boost acceptance of that standard, which doesn't work well with Microsoft products. Microsoft crushed older versions of Symphony's components, which Lotus Development began selling in 1983, in the marketplace. IBM bought Lotus in 1995.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »