The INQUIRER Top Five suites that took on Office

ALTHOUGH IT IS little known that he lost three bouts as an amateur, Rocky Marciano never tasted the bitter ashes of defeat in his 49-fight pro career. The only thing that Rocky couldn't beat was Fate: he died, aged just 46, after a plane crash.

Microsoft Office is the Rocky of software. The opponents keep on coming but Office just beats them to a bloody pulp. Some of them stick around nonetheless. That's called masochism.

Sometimes it's the lure of the lucre, other times it's all about sticking it to the Redmond man, but they keep on swinging. Here are five that tried their luck.

5. Lotus SmartSuite. Like a lot of ISVs in the late 1980s, Lotus felt that Microsoft had given it a bum steer on the target OS for development. When Microsoft eventually fessed up to focusing on Windows rather than OS/2, Lotus had to change direction sharpish. But when 1-2-3 for Windows finally arrived, it was too little too late. To make up for lost time, Lotus bought Samna for its Ami Pro wordprocessor, Approach Software for its database and the Organizer PIM from Threadz. With a port of Freelance Graphics for presentations, Lotus had the raw materials for a suite. But despite the nice ScreenCam utility and the odd superior feature, SmartSuite was never a match for Office.

4. GeoWorks Ensemble. This DOS-based GUI and apps suite earned a cult following in the early 1990s as a faster, cheaper alternative to Windows 3.0 that could run on any old heap of PC tin. In an interview here, the firm's CTO said lack of a spreadsheet, SDK and marketing nous didn't help its chances.

3. WordPerfect Office. WordPerfect had the best DOS WP ever and fair-to-middling spreadsheet, database and presentations software, but struggled to make sense of Windows ports. When Novell bought WordPerfect, it kept the WP and licensed Borland Paradox and QuattroPro to come up with a suite. When that plan died on its backside and Corel bought the resulting mess, Corel WordPerfect Office was born. It still has loyal users and niches such as law firms but Microsoft was so untroubled by its challenge that it even invested money in Corel.

2. StarOffice. German firm StarDivision developed this multiplatform suite and then sold out to Sun in 1999 back when starry-eyed Scott McNealy still thought taking on Microsoft at every turn constituted a strategy. The code was eventually handed over to the open-source community and the product remains popular with anybody who doesn't want, or can't afford Microsoft Office.

1. Google Apps. Many small companies believe that the best way to win in productivity applications is to move the goalposts, forget about spinning disks and optical media, and just develop pure web tools. It has also turned out to be pretty good way to get Google to buy your company. Google Apps is nice and will be nicer with the forthcoming presntations software, but it's too soon to say whether these products will do much damage to the fabulous wealth-creation vehicle that is Microsoft Office. µ