To successfully replace the office suite, in the beginning you must be able to interact with office files. Joel Spolsky (member of the office development team)

To successfully replace the office suite, in the beginning you must be able to interact with office files. Joel Spolsky (member of the office development team) attributed their success to this: > Microsoft Office ended up beating its competitors because it was able to read and write to file formats other than its own. For example, Excel was able to read files from Lotus, and was able to save the file without losing any information. The important lesson in order to gain market share was that in order for new users to try Microsoft Excel, they had to be able to work with the files their coworkers were creating. > Lesson: You don’t want your customers to feel locked into using your software. It helps with sales cycles because customers know that they can switch away if they so choose. While customers will be willing to try your product, they think two steps ahead. They want to ensure they can easily migrate to a new system. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on-software-on-both-sides-of-the-table/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on-sof...