Microsoft Office is one of the most popular and still unrivaled software packages for modern business, but also for private users, on the market, because the performance of the classic Office programs for text creation (with Word), spreadsheets (with Excel), communication (with Outlook) and the design of presentations (with PowerPoint) - including the functions that can be used intuitively - is not yet matched by any open source software.

This therefore does not offer a satisfactory substitute for the extensive functionalities of the individual Office programs - even with relatively simple features such as already the correction and comment functions in Word, the versatile design options in PowerPoint for creating informative reports, and especially with the professional business functions and editing options for data, as only Excel offers, as well as Outlook for real-time communication and the extensive features for organizing and archiving business e-mails. In addition, the software offering here is often limited to standard programs such as word processing and calculation.

A frequent shortcoming of free programs is also the low compatibility with the corresponding Microsoft Office programs, so that files created with them cannot be opened or can only be opened with errors. Therefore, in most cases there is no way around Microsoft Office, especially for professional use.

In addition to this, there are further programs available in the Standard and - especially in the Professional Plus Edition included programs such as above all Access for differentiated evaluation and data, and InfoPath for the creation of professional forms - also for web applications.