Last week, IBM went head to head against Microsoft as well as well other companies providing office suites by making their Lotus Symphony software free.
Now, eight days later, IBM has presented some results of their initial offering. It seems the Lotus Symphony suite has attracted over 100,000 registered users. That high amount of interest has spawned a lot of external support, with IBM's support forum taking on a massive increase in usage:
In fact, support forum posts have accelerated from less than one hundred the first day to more than 600 daily. Community members are also providing feedback on capabilities they wish to see in future releases.
IBM could easily take this very far. In terms of capital, they are one of the few companies who has the financial backing to not only seriously compete with but dominate Microsoft if that is indeed their aim. What remains to be seen is how IBM intends to expand their offering, and whether or not they will continue to make it free.