Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Oracle now charging US$90 for ODF-Office plug-in

The tool was available at no charge under Sun

Oracle has imposed a fee of US$90 per user on a plug-in for Microsoft Office that was available at no cost under Sun Microsystems' ownership.

The tool allows Word, Excel and PowerPoint users to read, edit and save documents in the ODF (Open Document Format), which is used by the competing OpenOffice productivity suite.

Sun, which was acquired by Oracle earlier this year, founded the open-source project that created OpenOffice.

Oracle continues to sponsor the project and sells two editions of OpenOffice in product form. A standard edition, meant for single users or very small companies, costs $49.95 per perpetual license. The enterprise edition, which requires a minimum of 100 users, adds features such as a Microsoft SharePoint connector and SDK (software development kit), and costs $90 per perpetual license.

A minimum of 100 users is also required to order the Office ODF plug-in, according to Oracle's Web site. In addition, customers who wish to receive upgrades in the future must also purchase a support contract, which costs roughly 22 percent of license fees per year.

The ODF plug-in is meant in part to provide interoperability between Microsoft's platform and ODF, which is backed by an lobbying group that counts IBM, EMC and Oracle among its members.

While Microsoft added support for ODF with the release of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 last year, Oracle's move could also be meant to snare business from enterprises that are reluctant to upgrade from Office 2003 but desire ODF compatibility, as some users noted on an Ubuntu forum.

An Oracle spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: EMC, Excel, IBM, IBM Australia, Microsoft, OpenOffice, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Ubuntu
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: microsoft office, odf, openoffice, oracle, plug-ins
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Oracle BPM Suite 11g: BPM without Barriers
    Over the years vendor specialists built tools to simplify a subset of the overall complex process like workflow, or enterprise application integration. Business process management suite software introduced the promise of a comprehensive solution to manage all enterprise processes and to do so with greater efficiency. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Prepare Your Enterprise for the Mobile Revolution: Boost the Bottom Line with Mobile UC
    This white paper will highlight the changes in the mobile workplace; outline the benefits of unified communications (UC) and Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) for mobile workers; identify the key market trends and business challenges IT managers must pay attention to now and into the future; and offer best practices for choosing a solution that will deliver clear ROI.
    Learn more »
  • Shedding Light on Backup and Availability Challenges in Virtual Environments
    This IDG white paper explores specific backup and availability challenges organisations must surmount as they move to virtualise their business-critical applications. It then shows how attaining proper service levels for these applications requires a high degree of visibility into the VMware virtual environment.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments