Sun and Oracle target MS Office users with new software solution

Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corp. have a joint solution they believe will be competition for Microsoft's ubiquitous Office suite. The new offering combines the recently released second version of the Oracle Collaboration Suite with StarOffice, a suite of word processing and spreadsheet applications from Sun. The combined software set will run on Sun Solaris servers.

The Oracle Collaboration suite contains calendar and e-mail functions, voice mail, and Web conferencing capabilities.

Microsoft is expected to integrate its Office applications with real-time conferencing and Web meeting features when Office 2003 debuts this fall. Both the Microsoft and Sun-Oracle solutions can help companies engage in collaborative business processes, but the Sun-Oracle team says its product set has special appeal for certain segments of the IT market.

"Oracle Collaboration Suite on Sun systems provides a solution that helps solve major issues for customers using enterprise messaging applications—especially in the areas of cost, security, and complexity," says Stuart Wells, a senior vice president for Sun. "At the same time, the availability of StarOffice as an alternative productivity suite allows customers to cut their tether to Microsoft's pricing schemes and frequent security breaches."