So now once again IBM is hot on the trail of trying to knock off Microsoft Office. Big Blue has been gunning for the Redmond giant ever since Bill Gates outsmarted them back in the last century. It is probably time to say to the giant of Armonk, “let go.” They need to move on to other things. But they won’t have it. IBM’s latest gambit, IBM Lotus Symphony, was unveiled in September when they announced the free p So now once again IBM is hot on the trail of trying to knock off Microsoft Office. Big Blue has been gunning for the Redmond giant ever since Bill Gates outsmarted them back in the last century. It is probably time to say to the giant of Armonk, “let go.” They need to move on to other things. But they won’t have it. IBM’s latest gambit, IBM Lotus Symphony, was unveiled in September when they announced the free productivity application, which is not unlike Open Office, Star Office or Google Apps. It is not hosted but it is downloadable and free.Of course the company is making the usual download claims, such as, “in its first two months, the software has been downloaded by more than one quarter-million registered users.”Big deal. What does that actually mean? There are lots of curious people out there whose curiosity is probably very much enhanced by the word “FREE.” I also find it astounding that IBM boasts that 88 percent of the downloaders are Microsoft Widnows customers. Duh. Since Microsoft has above a 90 percent market share in operating systems that sort of comes with the territory doesn’t it? To garner a wider audience IBM is trying to be very hip and offering a video guide on YouTube as well.For my money I think IBM should spend its research dollars on the kinds of technology that no one else does better such as improvements in storing and retrieving unstructured data, predictive analytics, voice command databases or video search capability, and the like. The world just doesn’t need another free productivity suite. Technology Industry