Office suite
 | It has been suggested that this article be merged into comparison of office suites. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2008. |
In computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite is a software suite intended to be used by typical clerical worker and knowledge workers. The components are generally distributed together, have a consistent user interface and usually can interact with each other, sometimes in ways that the operating system would not normally allow.
Host Medium _ Platform : offline or online
A distinction should be made between offline (e.g. MS Office and Star Office), hybrid (e.g. Microsoft LIVE and Google Docs read along with Google Gears) and purely online (e.g. Thinkfree, Zoho, and eDeskOnline) versions of office suites.
Typical components
- word processor
- spreadsheet
- presentation program
- database
- graphics suite
- communication
- email client
- personal information manager
- groupware
- Web log analysis software
Current suites
The currently dominant office suite is Microsoft Office, which is available for Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh. It has become a proprietary de-facto standard in office software.
But a new low cost alternative has emerged which is taking both the OpenDocument suites, which use the OpenDocument file format and Microsoft Office proprietary formats like .doc, .xls and .ppt is Celframe Office. It is making inroads in the corporate and educational segments where open-source software hasn't been able to do so. It is available for Windows and soon for other platforms.
Another alternative is any of the OpenDocument suites, which use the free OpenDocument file format, defined by ISO/IEC 26300. The most prominent of these is OpenOffice.org [citation needed], open-source software that is available for Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and other platforms. Celframe Office a proprietary alternative for Microsoft Office, StarOffice and KOffice support many of the features of Microsoft Office, as well as most of its file formats, and has spawned several derivatives such as NeoOffice, a port for Mac OS X that integrates into its Aqua interface, and OpenOffice.org.
A new category of "online word processors" allows editing of centrally stored documents using a web browser, but the limited success of such options are due to security issues.