MARKETING study PAPER

Marketing Research Paper

Abstract

This document marks a major milestone in the development of a “Strategic Marketing Plan” for the company office productivity. Its publication is timed to coincide with the company Conference 2004. Previous versions have had restricted circulation within the Company Marketing Project; this version launches the consultation process with the whole Community, aiming for a formal submission.

Marketing Research Paper

Product and company history

StarDivision, the initial author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. Its StarOffice merchandise evolved over the next ten years into a fully-fledged agency productivity suite. The business was came by by Sun Microsystems Inc throughout the summer of 1999, and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 20001. That same year, Sun made the momentous decision to open-source2 the product as OpenOffice.org and kick-start the OpenOffice.org Community (the Community) to support, develop, and promote the software under open-source principles.



Product Summary

OpenOffice.org suite comprises of four foremost applications:

•author - word processor

• Calc - spreadsheet

• Impress - presentations

• Draw - graphics

These submissions were originally a lone 'desktop' inside StarOffice which has now been divided into four applications. This devotes them a high degree of commonality (more so than MS-Office, which begun life as distinct packages which have been combined together).

In supplement, there are three utilities which operate over the foremost components:

A mathematical formula editor

Macro / Basic programming language

Data get access to devices for working with SQL databases

Independent reviews rate OpenOffice.org as capable as its competitors in terms of functionality7. However, it does lack some end-user 'extras' such as printed manuals, templates, clip-art libraries, etc.

OpenOffice.org is accessible for the following platforms:

Microsoft Windows (98, NT, ME, 2000 and XP)

GNU/Linux

Sun Solaris 8 functioning Environment

Mac OS X Darwin PPC (within X)

Some of the newer characteristics need installation of a Java Runtime natural environment (JRE). OpenOffice.org is accessible in over 30 languages.

Product Competitors

MS-Office is the biggest contestant in the office suite market. The product's market dominance is such that any potential competitor has to be able to demonstrate a migration path from and interoperability with MS-Office(Adcock, 2001).

Lotus SmartSuite is belongs to by IBM, and is seated rather uncomfortably among their other Lotus family of products. IBM do not appear to be dynamically marketing the product, focussing on server-based offerings like Lotus Workplace Documents. Lotus Smartsuite is accessible in international English (sic), French, German, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish.

Marketing Environment

This part of the design examines at trends in the outside world which could impact OpenOffice.org and the Community using the common Social, Technological, natural environment, and Political (STEP) model33. These components can constitute either risks or possibilities (or in some cases both) to OpenOffice.org and/or the Community.

Social components encompass the demographics and cultural components which affect customer desires and the size of promise markets. Some communal components include, the world's large-scale potential markets (e.g. China) are displaying a keen interest in open-source software, the open-source community extends to develop other high ...