ZDNet: Sun’s StarOffice: Challenging Microsoft’s Office Suite

“However, we see some discontent in the market. After years of
trying to implement homogenous office environments and to buy full
suites for every user–for example, sometimes buying Microsoft
Office Professional for users who would never touch a database,
just for the sake of absolute homogeneity–enterprises are
realizing that the majority of their users are consumers or light
producers of information, and that these users do not require all
of the advanced features of each new version of Office.

“Coinciding with this realization was Microsoft’s change in
licensing policies. Enterprises that do not buy a software
maintenance plan for Microsoft Office by July 31, 2002 (thereby
paying Microsoft a fee every year) will have to re-buy the software
the next time they want a new version, at roughly twice the price
they used to pay for an upgrade. This has engendered a lot of
resentment among Microsoft’s customers, and Gartner has experienced
a marked increase in the number of clients inquiring about
alternatives to Microsoft’s Office suite. Of Microsoft’s three
major office suite competitors–Sun Microsystems’ StarOffice,
Corel’s WordPerfect Suite, and Lotus’s SmartSuite –StarOffice may
become the greatest threat to Microsoft’s market share largely
because of the ‘mind share’ it has garnered as a free product and
through its connection to the open source movement…”

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