IBM releases Symphony 3.0

IBM has released its beta of Symphony, based on OpenOffice 3. Users have been asking the company to make Symphony's features more competitive with Microsoft Office, the dominant productivity suite among corporate users, reports Network World.

"The OpenOffice 3 code means we pick up a lot of improvements both from the ODF file format as well as the core code base," says Jeanette Barlow, manager of Lotus Symphony. She says it is the most significant step forward since the first Symphony beta was released in 2007.

IBM/Lotus, along with many others, is trying to provide alternatives to Microsoft Office, which has dominated for years. With companies segmenting their user base and assessing needs, many are looking at less expensive alternatives to Office.

Ricoh is aiming to up its office automation equipment market share to 26% this year in line with the projected 5% gross domestic product growth, states Bernama.

The company's market share was 21% last year, says MD Lim Eng Weng. He says his company would also strengthen its digital multi-function printing business given the increasing growth in the area.

"According to our business roadmap this year, we are going to invest and collaborate with IT giants for bigger and more stable deals," he says. Lim adds Ricoh is looking at vertical industries this year and plans to sustain the current level of business.

Tikona Digital Networks (TDN) has released its wireless broadband service, Tikona Wi-Bro, in 10 Indian cities and plans to roll out its network in 50 cities in 2010, writes IT News Online.

Currently, India has a low broadband penetration compared to that of mobiles, but consumers also face problems such as slow and inconsistent speed, poor quality customer support, high billing without alerts to users, long waiting periods for installation, lack of innovative service, and too many plans.

Tikona's service is powered by OFDM and MIMO 4th generation technologies and aims at providing a fixed broadband experience wirelessly. The company provides 2Mbps plans with a unique circuit breaker feature to control bill amount.