As the computer industry evolves from a proprietary world of limited choice for desktop technology to a world of open standards, IT departments are becoming ever more comfortable turning to alternative sources to source their wares.

 

OpenDocument format (ODF) is an open file format designed for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and documents. Originally developed by Sun, the standard was adopted by the Open Office XML technical committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium and based on the XML format originally created and implemented by the OpenOffice.org office suite.

 

Today, IBM (News - Alert) announced the “coming of age” of ODF with the general availability of Lotus Symphony.

 

Lotus Symphony represents a truly global launch with nearly 1 million beta testers, working with the solution in 24 languages, taking advantage of the offering’s Web 2.0 extensions, new technical support services for enterprises, and more.

 

The Lotus Symphony suite is a set of free, ODF-based software tools designed for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

 

According to Steve Mills, senior vice president of IBM Software “Major technology vendors are lining up to support ODF — even those previously in opposition to it.” “Symphony — backed by enterprise customer support services — is ready for business,” he said.

 

Lotus Symphony will continue to be freely available for downloading with free online, moderated support. However, IBM is announcing a fee-based service designed to support the needs of large organizations. The service, called IBM Elite Support for Lotus Symphony 1.0, will deliver unlimited remote technical support via an annual subscription to IBM’s Passport Advantage or Passport Advantage Express volume licensing programs.

 

In keeping with the forward looking ideals of this evolving technology, IBM is keen on promoting the fact that Lotus Symphony is aligned with Web 2.0. According to today’s announcement, Lotus Symphony individual users have the ability to influence the development of the software through feedback on the Symphony site.

 

IBM is also offering a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for extending Lotus Symphony with a series of plug-ins — including Eclipse and Universal Network Object component model and others. A free developer’s toolkit will be available on the Symphony site that end users and developers can leverage to create plug-ins, or software adaptors, and composite applications, or mashups. According to IBM’s announcement, this access will allow developers to “transform static documents into living information streams capable of managing primary business functions such as shipping, sales and fulfillment.”