IBM has launched at New York a free alternative to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs.
The package came under the name IBM Lotus Symphony and is available for download from the official website.

Lotus Symphony is based on the Open Document Format standard and allows you to import, edit and save different file formats including Microsoft Office files.
You can also export files to PDF.
The set of tools is supported by Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Free alternatives to the Office Suite have been available since a long time on the market but they have never reached the level of interest as Microsoft’s Office.
IBM is counting on the fact that it is the second world leader in the software industry.

Steve Mills, senior vice president, IBM Software Group declared that "IBM is committed to opening office desktop productivity applications just as we helped open enterprise computing with Linux.” "The lifeblood of any organization is contained in thousands of documents. When those documents are based on proprietary software, only future versions of the same software will be able to access that intelligence. This dynamic forces companies to keep paying license and maintenance fees to the same vendor for a basic commodity."