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IBM has thrown in its hat to compete with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, among others, in the desktop productivity arena.

Microsoft easily dominates the software market with its Office suite of productivity tools that run on both Windows and Macintosh. Sun has been trying to take market share away from Microsoft with its StarOffice, a product based on the Open Source OpenOffice.

Now IBM will enter this market with IBM Workplace, a network-managed suite of tools aimed at making it easier for groups to work together.

Last week, Sean Loiselle, IBM's business development executive for the Software Group, Asia Pacific, was in Hong Kong to demonstrate the technology. IBM's approach lies somewhere between Sun's  view of networking everything and Microsoft's way of putting everything on the desktop.

'IBM's Workplace is a portfolio of IBM products and is server-managed,' he said. Nevertheless, there is a Java-based desktop element that gives users the advantage of desktop performance with network management.

Annabella Yau,  executive, Software Group, IBM China/Hong Kong, said the aim was to help  people work together more efficiently.

'Workplace enables people to work together. Before 1995, people communicated without e-mail. It was the time of telephones and faxes. Today we use PCs, PDAs, mobile phones and all sorts of devices that are not easy to integrate. We believe Workplace can bring it all together,' she said.

In demonstrating the software, Mr Loiselle showed how it could benefit from networking while also including    the speed advantages of the desktop. By  displaying a screen of information in which there are several windows, he showed that only one of those was being updated in real time.

Some office workers complain that web-based, network-managed software is too slow.

Microsoft has taken advantage of this by trying to put everything on the desktop, but that  creates different problems.

IBM's approach attempts to merge all the best of Open Standards like Java, managed networking and the speed of desktop applications.

The company hopes to  put everything  together in such a way as to embrace other devices such as PDAs and mobile phones.

IBM Workplace runs on Windows and Linux, as well as Symbian, Palm, OS and PocketPC. There are plans to make it  MacOS X compatible later this year.

Much of the technology behind the product has come out of  IBM's Lotus group, which  is a favourite among large companies that want to be able to exchange information quickly and easily.

In a report on IBM's Workplace by research firm Gartner, the company recognises IBM's vision but also says it will not be a direct threat to Microsoft - yet.

'IBM has chosen to pursue this new phase of competition as a corporate-wide initiative, not just within the Lotus division or the Software Group. It's demonstrating the seriousness of its intent, despite ugly memories ranging from OS/2 to Lotus eSuite,' the report said.

'Enterprises may dislike the potential disruption caused by renewed competition with regard to desktop software, but if IBM is successful, the benefits in terms of renewed innovation due to increased competition could be substantial.'

Nevertheless, Microsoft will have its work cut out to maintain the kind of profits it is accustomed to with its Office Suite.



IBM desktop suite takes middle path