OpenOffice 3.0 Wants to Compete with Outlook
I was just over at the OpenOffice site browsing through some of their marketing materials to see if there was anything interesting. I came across a presentation that was given on September 19th at the OpenOffice 2007 Conference.
Context & Ripple Effects
Back in February 2007, Mark Evans asked whether Google Office would catch on, framing the year's central question: could anything dislodge Microsoft's grip on productivity software? OpenOffice's answer, per a September 19 presentation at the OpenOffice 2007 Conference that CyberNet surfaced from the project's own marketing materials, is to stop being just a document suite.
The significance is where OpenOffice is aiming: Outlook is not a word processor, it is the anchor of Microsoft's Exchange-and-email lock-in inside enterprises. A free desktop suite claiming parity there attacks the stickiest part of the Office bundle, not the easiest part.
First-order effects
- Microsoft now faces a zero-cost desktop alternative positioning itself directly against Outlook, threatening the email-and-calendar component that keeps corporate customers renewing Office licenses.
- OpenOffice's roadmap expands from documents into email and groupware, raising the project's ambitions — and its support and development burden — well beyond what a word processor and spreadsheet require.
Second-order effects
- With Google pushing hosted office applications since early 2007 and OpenOffice pushing a free desktop suite, Microsoft is being squeezed on Office pricing from two directions at once, making bundling discounts its likeliest defensive lever.
- Enterprise IT buyers gain negotiating leverage they have not had, since a credible free fallback changes the cost of rejecting Microsoft's renewal terms.
Third-order effects
- If free suites keep absorbing groupware functions, the real battleground shifts from file formats to server-side integration — whoever makes Exchange-compatible collaboration workable without Exchange sets the terms of enterprise office competition.
- The pattern points toward office software consolidating around platform ecosystems rather than standalone applications, with open-source projects needing institutional backing to sustain the broader scope.
The trend: Productivity suites are expanding into messaging and groupware as free and hosted challengers converge on Microsoft's Office-Outlook bundle from both the desktop and the browser.