“The momentum of StarOffice 5.2 carried over to StarOffice 6.0 with nearly one million requests for download of the beta version in just three months,” said Mike Rogers, vice president and general manager of desktop and office productivity, Sun Microsystems. “Through the StarOffice 6.0 beta program, we gained valuable customer feedback saying they would prefer to pay for a product from Sun that was bundled with value-added support and services. Therefore, our enhanced product and support offerings will meet the diverse needs of our broad customer base, specifically, office productivity tools for a multi-platform environment.”
“It’s clear that Sun is moving to a StarOffice business model that is sustainable for the long haul,” said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC’s vice president of system software research. “With this new structure in place, organizations of all sizes are certain to feel more comfortable knowing that the software will be commercially supported and will continue to evolve with the needs of the market.”
With the enhanced services and support, StarOffice software (branded StarSuiteTM in Asian markets) maintains its commitment to providing a low cost, full-featured office suite for day-to-day tasks, such as creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases on Linux, Solaris and Windows platforms. StarOffice software will continue to target cost conscious organizations in both the public and private sector who are evaluating their current office productivity budgets.
StarOffice software will be provided at a nominal charge based on a tiered, per-user structure. Sun will offer services and support contracts for help desk and end-user support, training, software upgrades and deployment and migration services.
Sun will continue to distribute StarOffice 6.0 through agreements with hardware OEMs, Linux distributors and software vendors. New Sun hardware, including SunRay(TM) appliances and Solaris workstations, will continue to come pre-installed with the StarOffice 6.0 software, once launched.
“StarOffice is a great value for consumers and small businesses,” said Eric Bassat, director of software at NEC CI, product marketing EMEA. “By pre-installing StarOffice on all new PC systems from NEC, we are able to provide customers with an essential application for both their Home and Office needs.”
“We are very excited to see a new version of the best office suite available on Linux,” said Frederic Bastok, co-founder and CTO of MandrakeSoft. “More and more corporate users are switching to Linux on desktops, so providing them an office suite fills an important opportunity.”
StarOffice 6.0 also will be offered to end-users through various retail channels. The retail package will include the software CD and user manual, Web-based training, a bundled support incident certificate and availability on Linux, Solaris and Windows platforms. It will continue to be priced under $100. The education market, which will be handled by the Sun Education line of business, will pay only for the cost of the media (CD-ROM) and shipping.
About OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is the open source, community-developed, multi-platform, multi-lingual office suite offering key desktop applications such as word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. OpenOffice.org, the source project, at www.openoffice.org is the home of the open source code development and the community.
About StarOffice Software
StarOffice software offers a full-featured, multi-platform office suite with word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, Web-publishing, charting, formula-editing and database applications that offer everyone from large organizations to governments to small business to individuals a cost effective multi-platform alternative to proprietary office suites.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision – “The Network Is The Computer[tm]” – has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to take their businesses to the nth. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.
©2002: Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, StarOffice, StarSuite, Solaris, SunRay and the Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
