Strategic Marketing Plan

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Welcome to the Strategic Marketing Plan for the OpenOffice.org Marketing Project. Copies of the marketing plan are available at marketing.openoffice.org in a variety of formats. This section of the wiki has been setup to transfer a copy of the plan to this site.

Cover Page

cover.png

Table of Contents

Introduction

What this Plan is...

This document is the first published Strategic Marketing Plan for the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite. Its publication is timed to coincide with the run-up to the second major release of OpenOffice.org, version 2.0. The Plan follows a three-month consultation process with the whole OpenOffice.org Community, and seeks formal adoption by the Community Council at the end of 2004.

The Plan looks at the current market for office productivity suites, at the major players in the field, and seeks to identify trends which will influence the market over the next five years. It looks at OpenOffice.org’s place within the market now, and where it should aim to be by 2010.

The analysis looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the OpenOffice.org suite, and how these should help influence the Community’s response to opportunities and threats in the marketplace.

It also looks in detail at the features of OpenOffice.org and the benefits these deliver to customers. From this analysis, the Plan identifies a number of target markets whose needs are most closely matched by the benefits provided by OpenOffice.org.

Finally, the Plan sets targets for penetration by OpenOffice.org into these target markets, and lists the main strategies which the Marketing Project proposes to achieve these goals.

...and what it is not

This document is not a Strategic Marketing Plan for the OpenOffice.org Community. Just as the software needs to attract users, so the Community needs to attract contributors who want to help the Community achieve its mission statement. This will be the subject of a separate Plan.

Contributions

As the Plan continues to evolve, the latest version will be available on the Marketing Project web site: http://marketing.openoffice.org/strategy. Comments and contributions are always welcome in the Marketing Project’s strategy discussion forum - see the Project web pages for an archive and details of how to participate.

Community Review

History

StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. Its StarOffice product developed over the next decade into a fully-fledged office productivity suite (spreadsheet, word processor, graphics, presentations) comprising over 7.5 million lines of code, and equalling in functionality the market-leading product (Microsoft Office).

The company was acquired by Sun Microsystems Inc during the summer of 1999, and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000(1). That same year, Sun made the momentous decision to open-source(2) the product as OpenOffice.org 1.0 and kick-start the OpenOffice.org Community (the Community) to support, develop, and promote the software under open-source principles(3). At the same time, Sun decided to use the same codebase as the foundation for the continuing commercial StarOffice product.

Goals

The Community(ii) was set up with the following mission statement:

OpenOffice.org Mission Statement To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

Success Criteria

The Community’s Success Criteria are derived directly from the mission statement:

  1. to grow a world wide Community capable of maintaining, developing, supporting, and promoting OpenOffice.org
  2. to develop OpenOffice.org to provide all the features expected from a world class office productivity suite
  3. to grow the market share of OpenOffice.org to a position of leadership
  4. to design OpenOffice.org to support easy translation into any language (including complex text and vertical writing languages), and provide translations and support in local languages worldwide
  5. to encourage porting to any computing platform capable of running the software (MS-Windows - all variants; Unix variants - e.g. Sun Solaris; Linux - all significant distributions; Apple Mac; etc)
  6. to architect OpenOffice.org on a modular basis, callable from all major programming languages, and document fully all APIs[4].
  7. to store all OpenOffice.org data in published XML formats and work with standards bodies to ensure compliance with emerging standards for office documents[5].

[ii]In this document, the term OpenOffice.org is always used to mean the software; the term the Community is used to refer to the OpenOffice.org project.

Community Goals

Marketing Goals

Product Goals

Market Review

Market Segmentation

Disruptive Technologies

Product Review

Distribution

Features and Benefits

Competitor Review

Microsoft Office

WordPerfect Office

Lotus SmartSuite

Other Office Suites

Other Competitors

Market Segmentation

Target Markets

Non-target Markets

Government

Education

Public Libraries

NFP's

SME's

OEM's

Linux Distributions

Review of the External Environment

Social and Cultural Environment

Technological Environment

Economic Environment

Political and Legal Environment

SWOT

SWOT Analysis

SWOT Recommendations

Goals and Objectives

Usage Goals

Marketing Objectives

Marketing Project

Strategic Proposals

Community

Product

Price

Place

Promotion

Message

Website

PR and Publicity

Direct Marketing

Advertising

Promotions

Conferences

Materials

People

Complementary Products

Appendix

Building the Plan

References

  1. http://www.openoffice.org/about_us/milestones.html
  2. OpenOffice.org uses a dual licence strategy for the source code: the GNU General Public licence and the Sun Industry Standards Source licence. See http://www.openoffice.org/license.html
  3. See for example What is Open Source on http://www.oss-institute.org/
  4. There is a good explanation of this and UNO technology at IBM’s DeveloperWorks site: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/co-uno.html
  5. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office
  6. For example MySQL AB, developers of the popular open-source database MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/company/
  7. Andrew Morton speaking at a meeting sponsored by the Forum on Technology and Innovation in July 2004 - http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/26641-1.html
  8. Monitored by the Statistics Project at http://stats.openoffice.org/
  9. Unpublished paper from Erwin Tenhumberg soo_ooo_market_share_analysis_draft_21july2004.sxw
  10. Reported in http://www.itworld.com/nl/lnx_desktop/05302002/
  11. For example the comparison of Office suites in ZDNet UK June 2004 http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,39024195,39158410,00.htm
  12. e.g. Logotron’s SchoolOffice (education sector) - http://www.logo.com/cat/view/school-office.html
  13. e.g. KaiOffice (Chinese) - http://www.kaisource.com/kaioffice68en/index.html
  14. e.g. SotOffice (LBA-Linux)- http://www.sotlinux.org/en/sotoffice/index.php and NeoOffice (MacOS) http://www.neooffice.org
  15. The ooo-build parallel fork is a good thing: it brings the notoriously unapproachable OpenOffice.org development process closer to what the rest of the community expects to deal with Linux Weekly News Aug 19,2004 - http://lwn.net/Articles/97549/bigpage
  16. Christensen and Raynor The Innovator’s Solution http://theinnovatorssolution.com
  17. e.g. OpenOffice.org is one of the main pretenders to the Microsoft Office throne, one of the few that can measure up to one of the most formidable office suites in the world http://www.itreviews.co.uk/software/s236.htm
  18. Typical estimates give MS-Windows 95%, Mac OS 3%, GNU/Linux 2%
  19. ...Microsoft increasingly offers licenses to the larger key accounts at very attractive cut prices to beat the competition http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.asp?report_id=222210&t=o&cat_id=4
  20. Microsoft has been reprimanded over misleading advertising by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The UK watchdog upheld complaints about a magazine advert which claimed that the open-source operating system Linux was more expensive than Windows. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3600724.stm
  21. Microsoft: Linux is a threat, it may mean prices cuts and less business for us Jo Best, Silicon.com 03-Sep-04 http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39123685,00.htm?nl=d20040906
  22. Microsoft Pushes Translating Its Programs into Developing Nations’ Languages Seattle Times July 2004 http://www.newsgleaner.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12315035&BRD=2340&PAG=740&dept_id=226964&rfi=6
  23. Microsoft has slashed prices on Windows XP and Office to join the Thai government’s ‘people’s PC’ project CNet Asia June 2003 http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/systems/0,39001153,39136847,00.htm
  24. e.g. the now discontinued Javastation product
  25. IBM’s new software is designed to be distributed and accessed through a Web server TechRepublic, May 2004 http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6265-5209067.html
  26. IBM Developerworks, June 2004 - http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/article/lwp20-features/
  27. For example Anyware Office - http://www.anywareoffice.com
  28. http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/solutions/staroffice.html#Education
  29. Open Source Lending CDs in Libraries: Howto, Bob Kerr, 2003 http://www.openoffice.org/nonav/issues/showattachment.cgi/11838/Open%20Source%20CD%20in%20libraries%20Howto.pdf
  30. Circuit Riders: A technology support solution for the voluntary sector http://www.lasa.org.uk/cgi-bin/publisher/display.cgi?1358-7102-93792+computanews
  31. Open source in the small and medium business sector Gavin Dudley, September 2004 http://www.tectonic.co.za/view_feature.php?viewid=2
  32. Microsoft broken up BBC Business News Wednesday, 7 June, 2000 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/781852.stm
  33. See for example http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/PEST Analysis.htm
  34. You can see that in places like China where they have this huge software market - $35bn in the next couple of years, according to IDC. They are endorsing Linux and paying stipends to the corporations there to use Linux, in an effort to try and keep the software business inside China. Carol Stafford, IBM worldwide vice president of Linux sales, July 2004. http://www.vnunet.com/analysis/1156787
  35. See for example Nicholas Carr’s now infamous Harvard Business Review articleIT Doesn’t Matter in May 2003 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/articles/matter.html
  36. e.g. Within Australia the small business sector comprises around 97 percent of all private sector businesses and employs 49 percent of the total work force or some 3.3 million people. http://www.sbdc.com.au/documents/5.3/BECreview2003CommunitiesofEnterprise.pdf
  37. Estimates from the Washington-based Business Software Alliance in July 2004 http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,10071717%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html
  38. e.g. Oracle’s 2000 patent application for content management systems granted in 2004 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,745,238.WKU.&OS=PN/6,745,238&RS=PN/6,745,238
  39. In Vietnam, the cost of MS-Office represents 1.4 years’ average local wages Miguel de Icaza, OOoConf 2003
  40. For insights into this see http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=12142
  41. Microsoft estimates widely reported in the press in July 2004.
  42. Jupiter Media reported in http://yahoo.pcworld.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,111616,00.asp
  43. Forrester Research reported in http://www.consultingtimes.com/archives/2004_03.html
  44. e.g. PC Treasures Inc’s Business Works Suite http://www.pctreasures.com/bundles/bussworkplus04.htm
  45. e.g. Scotland, Europe - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/18/openoffice_cds_live_for_lending/
  46. SourceForge at http://www.sf.net is the best known and most widely used repository of open-source projects. Several OpenOffice.org ‘spin-offs’ are hosted there such as OOoExtras
  47. php - php Hypertext Processor - is a common open-source scripting language for web sites - see http://www.php.net
  48. Thanks to Bob Kerr for this list http://marketing.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgId=1489564
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