8 Reasons Why OpenOffice 3.0 Could Be The Tipping Point Application (or not?)

(g) Openoffice still have a few "native" cards that Microsoft has yet to catch up with. Microsoft still hasn't an application equivalent to Draw or save directly to PDF and it is not as "hackable" as Openoffice. But then Microsoft has a remarkably well organised Office Portalthat has a number of resources that every Office user should at least explore.

(h) Openoffice has Sun Microsystems and IBM on its side. Microsoft may be backing Office but IBM and Sun Microsystems have already committed their support to Openoffice.org. IBM has had the opportunity to opensource Lotus Smartsuite, but chose not too. Instead, it rebadged Openoffice as Lotus Symphony and pitted it squarely against Microsoft with Big Blue support.

But while Openoffice and Microsoft Office are locked into a death match, web-based applications are catching up. Quickly. Microsoft has already committed to unleashing Albany, its cheap Microsoft Office suite. It has also hinted that it could give Microsoft Works free by pulling in advertising support. Google is gradually building up its software-as-a-service platform, with a particular emphasis on collaboration, something that Openoffice is sorely missing.

So while Openoffice could be the tipping point, it could well come up too late to prevent SaaS from toppling desktop-based applications.