ConsultingTimes: A New Star is Born: StarOffice 6 Rises to the Desktop Challenge

[ Thanks to Erwin Zijleman
for this link. ]

“As the opening salvo in our StarOffice/OpenOffice
series, ConsultingTimes is delighted to present an exclusive
interview with Iyer Venkatesan, the StarOffice product manager. He
gives us an inside look at how Sun is positioning StarOffice, the
target audience, key development goals, and other issues that are
sure to be of interest.

CT: Who do you see as the target audience for
StarOffice 6?
Venkatesan: The target audience for StarOffice in general is
organizations and customers that want an affordable alternative —
that want a choice, not only in office productivity, but also in
what platform — what operating system — and what file formats
they want to use.

Given those two overarching things, StarOffice lends itself to
being received very well by enterprises with multi-platform needs,
and those with budget constraints — small and medium businesses
that are strapped for cash — and would like to put their money
into things that will bring them revenue, but need an office
productivity suite to get them going. Education and government are
a couple of the other audiences. There’s also the consumer or
end-user market — the student, or the person who needs something
to use at home.

It’s a broad range of targets, but they all have two or three
things in common. They want affordable alternatives, and they want
choice in office productivity. When you choose StarOffice, you also
have a choice of the operating system and platform you want. They
obviously want a full-featured product as well — they don’t want
an office suite that doesn’t have a spreadsheet or some other major
feature.”

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