Alex: Thank you for posting that link. It was the article I knew would come from the Reliably Fatuous Jim Seymour.
If today hadn't been such a good market day for SUNW, I would be a bit shaken: Seymour's column was fairly evenhanded, not really a ZD-style pro-M$ slobber. He even makes one (count 'em) intelligent observation. Finding it is an exercise left to the reader.
Regards,
--QS
EDIT: This column may be more objective than Seymour's usual, but it is still fatuous. That's because he is reliably fatuous. --QS
Tech Savvy
A Hidden Payoff to Sun's Deal With Star Division
By Jim Seymour
Special to TheStreet.com
9/3/99 4:08 PM ET
URL: thestreet.com
The announcement earlier this week by Sun Microsystems (SUNW:Nasdaq) that it had acquired Germany's Star Division and would be giving away for free on the Web Star Office v. 5.1, the well-thought-of alternative to Microsoft's (MSFT:Nasdaq) Office 97 and Office 2000 packages, got a lot of attention in the press.
Sun wouldn't say what it paid for Star, but judging from all the positive press in the wake of the announcement, it got its money's worth. And in the inevitable press conference, Sun execs denied that their purchase was intended as any kind of slap in the face to Microsoft (c'mon, guys) and acted as if this free offering wasn't something new.
They also pledged to give away 100,000 copies of Star Office CDs to schools in North America -- what sweethearts! -- and suggested Sun's sometimes-partner America Online (AOL:NYSE) might start distributing it on its ubiquitous CD-ROMs. They even opined that, by gosh, you know, this meant even Sun's good buddies at Dell (DELL:Nasdaq), Compaq (CPQ:NYSE) and Gateway (GTW:NYSE) just might want to start pre-installing this gem on their new PCs for free. Instead of, ahem, Microsoft Office.
Hey, Scott, give me a hit on that doobie, too. Not a slap at Microsoft? Does the sun come up in the west these days?
Of course, TSC readers already knew they could get Star Office for free, because I told them how back in July. Star had offered the package to individuals free, via download, since last December, with business-use licenses available for a song.
But let's not dis Sun here for what was unarguably a smart, aggressive move. This bought good press, is a feel-good nudge towards supporting the "open software" movement -- Sun pledged to release the source code for Star Office, the way Netscape released the source code for "Mozilla," a.k.a. Netscape Navigator, last year -- and of course took a juicy swipe at Microsoft.
It must have been a frustrating day in Redmond. Microsoft has to defend its Office revenue, which is one of its three most important income streams: Office applications, Windows in its many flavors, and programmers' tools. (Someday Microsoft may be able to add its Internet operations to that list, but not anytime soon.)
I don't think Microsoft is in any danger from Star Office, despite some weird TV-news coverage this week that forecast gloom and doom for the 'softies in the wake of the Star Office freebie offer. Office still has a 90%-plus market share in office productivity-software suites, regularly rolling over IBM's (IBM:NYSE) Lotus SmartSuite, Corel (CORL:Nasdaq) WordPerfect and, yes, Star Office.
But I also think that, thanks to Sun's high-profile distribution of Star Office, Microsoft will begin to lose some of that market share. When the choice comes down to SmartSuite, WordPerfect or Office 2000 -- and the first two are cheaper than the Microsoft offering but still hardly free -- we do one kind of calculation. When a solid, completely free product is added into that mix, the calculation changes. I think Star Office will be a modest hit in small businesses, will probably score a few high-profile wins at larger companies and may do very well in the home and personal-software markets. It might even gain traction in the OEM market, with some second-tier boxmakers.
This Sun announcement was not, however, quite what it seemed -- the funny business over the not-so-new "free" status of Star Office notwithstanding. To decode some of what Sun people said at the announcement, a copy of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass would have been handy.
In a sense, giving away Star Office 5.1 (which runs fine not only on Sun's Solaris operating system, but also on the popular flavors of Windows, Linux and even, gasp, OS/2) now is a little like a clearance sale, because Star Office has been headed for some time for a complete rewrite and a profound repositioning.
Star Division executives have been saying all year that they planned to migrate Star Office to a server-centric model. Sun underscored that this week, saying that it will aggressively push towards a more Web-centric product -- can you say "ASP"? -- and will also move Star Office toward using the XML document-formatting standard as the product's native file format.
Star Office does a good job now of reading and writing to Microsoft Office's native file formats for easy exchange of documents, but adding real XML-format files will be a boon to those moving their data to Web sites.
And the Sun and Star Division people also say they're eager to get Star Office onto other platforms, including the Palm Pilot, as quickly as they can.
This kind of recoding of a big, complex product takes time and lots of money. It remains to be seen whether Sun is ready to fuel that rapid development it talks about with enough cash to get the revamped products to market by the end of the year ... or, at worst, early 2000.
Sun's other hidden objective here is to make sure it has software for its new line of "thin client" desktops, which will be rolled out at Sun's annual Enterprise Computing Forum at the Javits Center in New York City, beginning Sept. 8. Sun's earlier Java-based Javastation line of NCs, or "network computers," were widely viewed as failures, in part because they lacked high-quality office-applications software packages. (That they were goofily overpriced and came to market with terrible timing didn't help.)
Now, with Star Office and, Sun hopes, its successors, Sun has more of the tools it needs to assert broadly its server-centric view of computing. That has to be a big step for Sun, which, trading this week at its all-time highs, looks headed for a strong year.
Footnote: A hit-and-run victim in this deal may be GraphOn (GOJO:Nasdaq OTC BB), a small producer of tools for application service providers (ASPs), including one that lets ASPs deal traditional Windows programs, such as WordPerfect, out to customers running Linux. If a high-quality native-Linux-compatible office-productivity package, Star Office, is available for free, from a respected source like Sun -- and is likely to be quickly followed by an ASP-enabled version -- GraphOn is going to have one big ouch.
Is Star Office any good? Should you try it? If you already own and are happy with Microsoft Office 97 or Office 2000, I'd give it a pass. Star Office is a serious, if maybe not quite equal competitor to Office 97, but is not on the Office 2000 level.
If you're struggling along with something like Microsoft Works or an older version of WordPerfect or SmartSuite, then sure, take a look at Star Office. The price is certainly right. You can download it from Sun's Web site or order a CD-ROM of the program for just $15.95, including shipping, from that same URL.
A cautionary note: The download runs about 64 MB, so unless you have a fast, reliable connection to the Web -- cable modem, DSL, or T1 or faster access -- but probably not, say, ISDN, and certainly not a standard dial-up connection -- save yourself a lot of pain by ordering the CD-ROM. Ditto if you find your ISP connection gets flaky during loooong downloads. Me? I've tried Star Office. I liked it OK. But I prefer Office 2000.
Then again, I already own Office 2000. If I didn't, Office's $300-to-$500 price tag would have me looking pretty closely at Star Office.
If you do try Star Office, let me know what you think of it. |
