Some things never change, and our reliance on a word processor, spreadsheet application and presentation tools has made Microsoft a lot of money. “Office” as we all know it resides on most PC’s and we use it all the time. I know I couldn’t live without Excel and its formula’s take a lot of strain off my frontal lobe.

Well, now the other big players in the enterprise productivity space are throwing resources behind “office clones” and developing their own suite’s.

Who are the players, and how can you get involved?

Google:
Google began developing Google Docs and Spreadsheets actively last year and yesterday they launched an addition to the suite, namely the much anticipated Presentation application. This product is entirely web based and acessible by anyone who has a Google email account. They have also simplified the name to Google Docs. I have tested the presentation module, and I’m impressed! It integrates seamlessly with their storage and document management and is very easy to use. It remains true to their vision of “keeping things simple” and doesn’t have all of the power features that are available in traditional offline products. The major benefit is that its web based and can be accessed from anywhere, which will capture the student/traveler/nomad market who don’t always sit down in front of the same PC. Click here for a demo.

My Rating: 7/10 Potential to own market 7/10

The Google Pack is a free downloadable collection of Windows software that includes StarOffice. StarOffice is built by Sun and is a great alternative to the incumbent office suite. It works great and is almost ready to replace Microsoft as my default office suite. The suite includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and more. The pack also includes most of the free software that is essential to todays workplace such as Adobe Reader, Firefox, Norton and Spyware Doctor. All this for free in one easy download, makes for a great alternative at an even better price.

My Rating: 8/10 Potential to own market 5/10

OpenOffice:

OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to a pretty well established product. The fully featured suite has been a resident on my desktop for the last 2 years, and is a favorite for Linux users. Unfortunately with Google’s endorsement of StarOffice, I think they may struggle to gain mass appeal in the future. The product is very clean, has all the advanced features and interpenetrates nicely with Microsoft formats. Its a great alternative and one worth watching if you are keen on an off line application.

Rating 6/10 Potential to own market 4/10

IBM:
Launched today IBM’s Lotus Symphony Office Suite is the newest entrant in this very competitive industry. IBM has a lot of brand equity in the enterprise market and they will be hoping to leverage this in order to gain mass adoption. From my limited testing, the product looks good, features are impressive and their approach to automation and document management is something to watch. IBM has also joined forces with Google, so we may see Lotus Symphony included in the Google Pack very soon.

Rating 7/10 Potential to own market 7/10

So whats the silver bullet, how do Sun, Google and IBM plan to topple Microsoft’s dominence in this space? The answer is the OpenDocument format. OpenDocument Format is based on an Internet-era protocol called XML, short for Extensible Markup Language, which enables automated machine-to-machine communication. Microsoft has the same goal of software automation, but it endorses its own document format, called Office Open XML. Earlier this month, Microsoft failed in its initial effort to have Office Open XML ratified as a global technical standard by the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva. The opportunity the others propose is one of an open standard while still including support for existing Microsoft file formats. Through collective development and offering these products for free, it will be a hard long road, but these 3 companies believe they have a product worth supporting. Only time will tell, but its great for the consumer and productivity in general.

The Telecoms Action Group, with funding from Mark Shuttleworth and the help of lawyer Michael Alachouzos, is planning to ‘kick Telkom where it hurts’.

Lawyer for TAG, Michael Alachouzos said at iWeek yesterday that the best way people can put pressure on Telkom is to become shareholders of Telkom. By doing so, any person with even a single share has various rights, including looking at the company’s share register and attending its Annual General Meetings.

Alachouzos says that any 100 shareholders can convene a general meeting and giving it rights as shareholders. He stated TAG has lots of shares and has started handing them out to individuals with the end goal of convening a meeting.

So far the TAG has transferred shares to around 70 individuals, but it is an ongoing project which is expected to reach many more individuals in the next few months.

At the recent Apple “The beat goes on” special event, Steve Jobs refreshed the entire iPod lineup. The old iPod’s have been improved and a new touch screen iPod was released. The biggest news of all was the price drop for the 8Gb iPhone, that has been reduced by $200.

So lets introduce the new ipods:

Ipod Nano: the new Nano features a beautiful colour screen and metallic finish. The unit is still extremely small and thin, but the proportions have been changed, so its now a little more stumpy, wider and shorter. The real bonus is that video playback has been added as well as Coverflow, which allows a more graphical music selector. All in all, its a great improvement on Apples most successful iPod, and offers great value for a small device. 4Gb and 8Gb models are available.

iPod Classic: the old iPod as we knew it has changed and now will be referred to as the “Classic”. Being the only hard drive based iPod, the Classic now has the same metallic finish as the Nano, and is available in larger 80GB and 160GB capacities. Battery life has also been injected with steroids and the Classic has 30 hours of battery for audio playback, 6 hours of video on the 80GB version, and 40 hours / 7 hours for the 160GB unit. The iPod Classic is also slimmer than its predecessor.

iPod Touch: the new member of the iPod family, and possibly the most talked about addition since the launch. The new flagship device features a touch screen the same size as the iPhone, while the device is 8 millimeters thinner. Its basically an iPhone without the phone part, and features the “same multi-touch interface”. The best addition is WiFi, coupled with a built in Safari web browser, allowing you to browse the web and watch YouTube video’s. Apple also released a wireless version of iTunes for the iPhone and iPod touch, that allows downloading of music, podcasts and ring tones directly to the device, via the Wifi/GSM connection. The iPod touch will be sold in 8GB and 16GB flavors and will be priced at $299 and $399 respectively. This is a real alternative for people outside the US, who love the iPhone, but could never get their hands on them due to carrier wars. There may not be a GSM connection on board, but WiFi offers faster speeds and really justifies the investment made by many web companies such as Facebook and Meebo, in an iPhone specific web app. I see the Touch being very popular and indicative of where Apple is moving their iPod lineup.

iPhone: the iPhone hasn’t changed, it Just got $200 cheaper (yes, that isnt a typo) . With almost 1 Million iPhone’s sold Apple is phasing out the 4Gb model and has dropped the Price of the 8Gb model to boost further sales. While this penalizes early adopters, its a great move to get more users onto the platform and bring the iPhone in line with the Touch pricing.

The iPod Shuffle has also been released in a range of new colours, but nothings changed in terms of the device’s specs.

So to recap, thats two new full fledged iPod’s, a new Wireless iTunes store and updates/upgrades to the rest of the lineup.

Telkom’s R2.4bn proposed purchase of BCX was denied by the Competition Tribunal because it was a clear business tatic to prevent deregulation and stifle competition.

Business Connexion shareholders accepted the offer readily, but there was a staff exodus as technicians baled out, fearing they would became part of a parastatal notorious for stifling technology innovation. Both the ISPA (Internet Service Providers Association) and multiple ISP’s challenged the bid.

The tribunal said convergence of voice and data services depended on networking technologies dominated by market leaders. The takeover would have removed an effective competitor as Business Connexion was “poised to become a formidable competitor to Telkom” in managed network services. The deal would have let Telkom gain a much larger market share and had a detrimental effect on competition by making it harder for rivals to grow and possibly push smaller rivals out of business.

The tribunal ruled that Telkom would just be taking BCX out of the market to compete against telkom for converged data and voip services.