IBM users tune into Symphony

IBM is heralding an 'evolution' in productivity software

IBM claims that more than 100,000 users have downloaded its Symphony productivity suite in the first week of availability.

The free beta release of the office suite is the fastest IBM software offering to reach the 100,000 download mark.

Executives were quick to claim that the milestone was indicative of "an evolution" in productivity software.

"It is more than a free download," boasted Mike Rhodin, general manager of IBM Collaboration and Lotus Software.

"This tidal wave of adoption is creating an independent mass of users accustomed to open documents."

The latest incarnation of Lotus Symphony is based on the OpenOffice.org project, and IBM is hoping that the suite will help turn enterprises over to the Open Document Format (ODF) which is backed by IBM, Sun Microsystems and Google.

The document standard competes with Microsoft's OpenXML format, which is used in Office 2007.

The two camps are locked in a battle to become the dominant open document standard, which has become increasingly important as more governments and organisations adopt open document policies.

Microsoft Office maintains a dominant place in the market with more than 60 million copies sold in the past year.

But its OpenXML format suffered a significant setback recently when the International Standards Organization failed to approve it as a recognised industry standard.

ODF was approved as a standard in May of 2006.