With the introduction of Lotus Symphony age-old rivals, IBM and Microsoft, will again compete with each other. The Lotus Symphony is a free office suite, targeting Microsoft's golden hen, MS Office. IBM reports that its new office suite offers millions of companies and consumers the chance to save hundreds of dollars on each of their Microsoft Office licenses by providing support for Microsoft Office 2007 with the newest version of Lotus Symphony, IBM's free of charge productivity software suite. This could translate into millions of dollars in savings at many large companies that are looking for financial relief in the current economy.

The ability to import Microsoft Office 2007 files into Symphony means that Microsoft Office customers can save on licensing costs by switching to Symphony while retaining access to, and easy use of, the contents of their Office files.

The Lotus Symphony 1.3 also offers DataPilot Table improvements that make it easy to drill down and analyze data. It also enhances mail merge and envelope printing for organizations that need simple, efficient ways to communicate with their customers.

Symphony 1.3 also provides animation to add sizzle to presentations and interoperate with Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

The new version of Symphony allows users to drag-and-drop plug-ins, extending its use to other business applications.

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