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Sun Microsystems is offering distributors and OEMs backline support for the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, which is a free alternative to its own branded StarOffice offering.

Sun has also announced that it has created a StarOffice server product, which is a large batch conversion engine that converts documents in any of the 40 formats supported by StarOffice into a PDF or ODF, and which can process about 100 documents a minute.

Both products are alternatives to Microsoft Office and are based on the ODF document format, the rival to Microsoft's OpenXML. The two systems have long held similar features and have shared much of the same source code.

Sun's new strategy will have the free OpenOffice.org suite targeting consumers, while the StarOffice suite will be pitched to enterprise customers. The main difference, said the company, will be support.

OpenOffice.org is a free, open source platform designed to be interoperable with every major commercial office suite and compatible with the internationally standardized OpenDocument Format. It runs natively on Windows, GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X and several other platforms, and is backed by the OpenOffice.org Project, an international community of volunteers and sponsors, including Sun.

StarOffice, meanwhile, is essentially the same product as OpenOffice.org but with the addition of support and indemnification for enterprise and government users, said Mark Herring, senior director of Network.com for Sun Microsystems.

Sun's move to offer support for OpenOffice comes as OpenOffice.org is being downloaded 1 million times per week, with total downloads to date standing at about 110 million, Herring said.

Out of that number, Sun estimates that "tens of millions" of people are actively using the software, according to Herring. The most recent version is 2.3. Version 2.4 is expected in March and will contain significant new features, according to the OpenOffice website.

"Microsoft Office is still the dominant tool out there - only a fool would deny that," he said. "But [OpenOffice] has had a huge amount of momentum."

Sun believes the average OpenOffice user is younger than the average Microsoft Office user, and that download activity in Europe and the US has been greater than in Asian countries, he added.

Sun plans to provide support for any extensions it creates, according to Herring. As for ones made by third parties, "we would have to work with them on that code on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Backline support for OpenOffice will start at USD 20 a user per year for 24-by-7 phone and e-mail support, but that price drops based on volume, Herring said.

The manufacturer's suggested retail price for StarOffice is USD 69; pricing for StarOffice 8 Server starts at about USD 10,000.

Consumers who buy StarOffice, also get phone and e-mail support, which is not physically offered by Sun but has been outsourced to a third party. However, there is no plan to offer that kind of frontline, end-user support for OpenOffice.org at this time, he said.