Competition Heats Up In Office Suites

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May 20, 1999 (12:00 AM EDT)

As several state attorneys general continue a separate antitrust investigation into Microsoft's Office business, competitor Corel Corp. is making headway executing WordPerfect suite bundling deals with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Lotus Development Corp., another Microsoft Office competitor, also has made gains in its SmartSuite OEM business since the antitrust suit began last year, officials there confirmed.

Tuesday, the Ottawa-based Corel announced it has landed two major OEM bundling deals for its WordPerfect Suite 8 with Micro Pro Inc. and Edge Corp. International. As part of the pact, Micro Pro will bundle the WordPerfect Suite 8 on its Constellation PC series, which range in price from $799 to $2,000, and Edge Corp. will bundle the suite on its low-cost PCs that sell in the United States for $299 and higher.

These deals complement a series of similar WordPerfect Suite 8 bundling deals Corel executed this spring with other PC vendors including PC Chips Group, Microworkz Computer Corp. and Gobi Inc. In April of 1998, Corel also landed a bundling deal on three Compaq Presario PC models sold at Radio Shack locations in the United States.

While Corel officials attribute the slew of recent OEM successes to increasing demand for lower-cost alternatives to Microsoft Office 97, they maintain that the climate for doing business with PC manufacturers has improved since the Microsoft antitrust charged were filed in spring of 1998. "The door has opened a little bit [since the antitrust charges were filed] and it has leveled the playing field somewhat," a Corel spokeswoman said.

One of the company's OEM partners agreed. "It does factor into it," said John Burgos, Director of Purchasing for Micro Pro, Cleveland, which also bundles Microsoft Office 97 on some of its PCs. "We think a lot of [reluctance to bundle non-Microsoft products] will change. There are a lot of things changing as the industry grows and evolves around the Internet. We're looking for small companies popping up to compete against Microsoft and I think major OEMs and system houses will begin to support that challenge," Burgos said.

Microsoft Office originally was included as part of the antitrust lawsuit filed by a group of state attorneys general against Microsoft in May of 1998, but that product issue was eliminated from the major antitrust litigation now being argued in Washington, D.C. Last summer, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson merged the states' and the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust charges into one case that focuses on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and Microsoft's alleged anti-competitive licensing practices, and not on Office.

While Office was removed from the central case, however, a number of state attorneys general continue to investigate Microsoft's Office licensing and business practices and a separate lawsuit is still under consideration, several sources told CRN recently. Most sources estimate Office captures over 90 percent of the Windows suite market.

This week, officials from the New York State, Florida and Utah attorneys general offices declined to comment on the status of the investigation, but recently, at least one assistant attorney general confirmed that the probe is far from over.

"We have Civil Investigative Subpoenas out there and we're waiting for production from Microsoft," said Jay Vail, an assistant attorney general from Florida, in an interview last month, noting that compliance was initially expected to be delivered in mid May. "That's the current agreement. We don't want the investigation to interfere with the progress of the [current] trial."

Sources said Microsoft recently was granted an extension as the major antitrust trial continues to drag on in Washington, but they claim it's not a dead issue. "It's still an active investigation," said one official with the New York state attorney general's office in an interview last month. "But everything is on hold pending the outcome of the current trial."

Officials acknowledge there is a potential for all issues -- including the Microsoft Office concern -- to be resolved in a settlement or judgement in the current case. This week, a report in the Wall Street Journal suggested that Judge Jackson prefers corrective action in the form of Microsoft lifting restrictive agreements and giving OEMs and consumers more choice and options in selecting software, rather than split up the company, which was one possible remedy.

Overall, Microsoft derives a small percentage of its Office revenues from bundling deals on PCs. However, sources claim the software giant wants to ensure that Corel and Lotus do not execute more bundling deals for their software suites on PCs because it could cut into sales of the stand-alone Office suite, which sells for between $250 and $500 to consumers. Office is Microsoft's second best-selling software product, topped only by the Windows operating system.

Microsoft's other competitor in the lucrative office suite market, Lotus Development Corp., also is seeing an upward turn in OEM deals since the antitrust suit was launched. "There's a nice fallout because of that," said Craig Colwell, a SmartSuite product manager for Lotus, an IBM Corp. subsidiary, in Cambridge, Mass.

"We had a pickup in OEM sales with Compaq in the Pacific Rim and we are picking up and a lot of other small OEMs taking advantage of the price point," Colwell said. "The Microsoft issue at large seems to have opened up peoples' mind set. It's a real positive influence. We've seen a significant increase in [SmartSuite OEM] volume and new players" since the charges were filed, he said.

The investigation remains in limbo as all three players, Microsoft, Corel and Lotus, begin shipping their next-generation suites. Microsoft Office 2000 and Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 began shipping to corporate customers this month and Lotus plans to debut SmartSuite Millennium Edition 9.5 next month.