Lotus fanfares SmartSuite Millennium Edition

Lotus has launched the next release of its desktop productivity suite of applications - SmartSuite Millennium Edition. The company claims the product is a strong reply to rival Microsoft's market-leading Office Suit.

IBM-owned Lotus has added 100 new features to SmartSuite, and claims the product is compatible with Office applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel.
Lynne Capozzi, Lotus vice-president Internet applications division, said: "With this product customers get more voice, more enterprise integration, more [Lotus] Domino and Notes integration. It's better value than Office."

To back up this claim, Lotus commissioned California-based Creative Networks to carry out a cost comparison of SmartSuite 97 and Office 97. The research found SmartSuite users suffer less downtime, and users take less time to get used to the Lotus product.

In addition to tight integration with the Internet - also a feature the next version of Office will boast - Lotus is talking up the way the suite makes use of voice recognition software from IBM. The product even ships with a headset.

Commenting on the voice recognition software, Simon Levin, a Gartner analyst, said: "It is a point of differentiation. Lotus is not unique - for example, Corel bundles Dragon Dictate. But SmartSuite is appealing to consumers and the small business market."

Microsoft was unavailable for comment.