I own SUNW, Stan. Sun's StarOffice Launches Renewed Attack on MS Office
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May 15, 2002 (NewsFactor.com via COMTEX) -- In a campaign to compete directly with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) released its new StarOffice suite of applications Wednesday, touting the package as an alternative to proprietary software and noting that StarOffice has fewer licensing restrictions.
With enterprise pricing as low as US$25, StarOffice 6.0 can run on Linux, Solaris and Windows platforms and will retail for $79.95 -- compared with $479 for Microsoft Office or $239 for an MS Office upgrade.
Earlier this year, Sun promised to release a more robust application with better customer support than version 5.2, which the company has offered since it acquired the StarOffice product line in 1999.
Using open and published XML (extensible markup language), documents created in StarOffice can be opened, modified and shared with other programs, such as Office XP.
StarOffice is created from the same software as OpenOffice, an open source project developed by Sun and others in which code is changed and shared among programmers.
The new suite will be made available to the retail market on May 21st.
Sun Cites Demand
Mike Rogers, vice president and general manager of desktop and office productivity software at Sun Microsystems, said earlier versions of StarOffice registered more than 8 million downloads, indicating that customers are demanding an alternative to Microsoft Office.
"Our enterprise customers worldwide are asking for freedom of choice, and we're giving it to them with StarOffice 6.0 -- freedom from restrictive licensing and freedom from unreasonable pricing and forced upgrades," Rogers said. |
