There will soon be another entrant in the lopsided Office wars

IBM, not exactly a powerhouse in desktop applications, has its own attack on the desktop planned for later this year. IBM Software and its Lotus Software Group have built J2EE-based spreadsheet, document and presentation graphics "applications" that will be bundled for free with the company's WebSphere portal, sources said. It's not a full-frontal assault on Microsoft Office, which controls an estimated 90 percent or more of corporate desktops. Rather, channel players and other observers see the move as something of a Trojan horse. The applications are served up "on demand" from the server. CIOs, for whom buying portals has become a top priority, will be able to get for free what IBM says will be 80 percent of the Office functionality most people use, said one channel source familiar with the plan. "IBM can now say, 'Look, you can pay for half the portal with what you'll save in Office,' " the source said. IT managers and the solution providers supporting them will at the very least be able to use the offering as leverage to get Microsoft Office pricing down, he said.