China's software startup Evermore Software LLC launched a daring challenge on February 16 to US software powerhouse Microsoft monopoly on Office software by introducing an English version of Evermore Integrated Office (EIOffice).

Evermore, a Sino-US joint venture set up in 2000 in Wuxi City of southern China, demonstrated its innovative suite of desktop software at the DEMO 2004 conference, a two-day showcase of latest IT innovations and products that challenge the status quo of the high-tech market.

The English-version of EIOffice was the result of three-year intensive development by Evermore, which had already tested the sweet fruit of success in the fastest-growing Chinese market with its Chinese version of Office desktop software.

Dubbed as the "first real Office," EIOffice is a unique and more user-friendly alternative to the Microsoft Office, by combining all the components of a conventional Office suite into one application.

The integrated EIOffice is not only a word processor, but also a spreadsheet, and a business graphics application at the same time.

It stores all text, worksheets, graphics, audio, video and slides in one file format, saving the users the trouble to switch from Word processor to Excel or Powerpoint while working on financial spreadsheets or doing documents containing complicated graphics.

Written in Java, EIOffice works on all operating systems that support Java, including Windows, Linux and Macintosh OS X.

"EIOffice is the first real Office because it is the first truly integrated Office," said Gus Tsao, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Evermore said. "It is one program, one menu system, one user interface, programed under one roof by one team, with one design, one file format for all data - and it introduces the Paste Link command, one tool that enables users to exploit the integration built into EIOffice."

By introducing EIOffice at the DEMO conference, Evermore hoped to get the exposure of its new product in the US market and establish contacts with corporate software buyers, venture capitalists, potential marketing partners and distributors.

Tsao said that although there are many skeptics for Everemore's challenge to the software Microsoft, he is confident about his success with the backing of the Chinese government and the huge market there.

Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMO, lauded Evermore's participation as the first Chinese company, saying it refuted "preconceptions about the technology industry and the domination of the desktop by Microsoft."

She said that China is not just a huge consumer market for US companies to explore, but also "a country of entrepreneurs taking on rivals in overseas markets, including the US."

"It's very important for us to recognize that the technology market is a global market, and China is a huge player in that market, not just a consumer products producer but also an innovator itself," Shipley told Xinhua.

Explaining his motivation for developing the integrated Office software, Tsao noted that Microsoft's inflexibility, high prices and security flaws "are driving computer users worldwide to look for Office alternatives."

He said that while no US software publisher is unwilling to invest huge amount of money in developing an alternative to Microsoft Office, China can do it because it "is a test bed for new data integration technologies" with the fastest-growing number of new computer users as a result of its robust economy.

Tsao gained fame in China's software industry in the mid-1980s, when he founded software publisher Daybreak Technologies Inc., developer of "Silk," a spreadsheet that challenged then-market leader Lotus 123 and won the Editor's Choice award from PC Magazine over Lotus in 1987.

A confident Tsao said he has broader goal in developing software products with an aim to set future standard in the Office software with more innovative products. "'Made in Japan' was once synonymous with shoddy products and cheap prices," said Tsao. "That was past. Look at Japan today, (it is) setting standards against which companies around the world must compete. China is making the same journey - and evermore is simply the head of a long Chinese software dragon."

About 550 company leaders, engineers, venture capitalists and bankers from all over the world are gathering here for the DEMO 2004, which features 67 companies that will demonstrate their latest innovations in the IT industry.

(China Daily February 18, 2004)