If change is coming, best be in front of it, than being dragged along for the ride While change is coming to the U.S. tomorrow, it is with some anxiety that change is coming to the Office productivity suite that I use during my day job at IBM.The IBM WebSphere division is shifting to using IBM Lotus Symphony, based on OpenOffice.org, documents in future presentations to IBM executives at several decision checkpoint meetings. We can continue to use Microsoft Office as we have in the past, but presentations to these standing meetings must be delivered using IBM Lotus Symphony. It’ll be interesting to see how long we can maintain two versions of each file, PPT and ODT, before breaking down and working solely off the ODT file. I can probably hold out for one month.As far as I can tell, this is not an IBM-wide shift. But considering the level of chart and deck sharing that occurs at IBM, the decision will expose a lot of IBMers, inside and outside of the WebSphere division, to Symphony (and OO.o). It’s not that I have anything against OO.o or Symphony. I’m simply 10 times more productive using a tool that I have over 10 years’ experience with. But if change is coming, best be in front of it, than being dragged along for the ride.I guess I’ll never get to try Office 2007. 😉p.s.: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.” Open Source