The most common office productivity suite being used today is the Microsoft Office suite (which includeds: MS Outlook, MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint, MS Access & MS Publisher) with which most users are familiar with as they have been using this for a number of years.

Business Server Appliances are fully compatible with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook for email however many organisations are starting to switch to non commercial open source alternatives that provide all of the essential functionality but without much of the uneccessary bloat. This can save organisations around £200 per PC in software licensing costs alone.

Business Server Appliances are fully compatible with the following Open Source productivy suites which can be used as an alternative to Microsoft Office;

Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org)

IBM Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com)

Both of these applications are totally free of charge.