I recently quit my job at IBM, and there are two more important, albeit unwritten, tenets:

1) Getting manager approval is next to impossible. A friend of mine that's a tech writer was unable to obtain one in the time I was there (approximately a year).

2) The learning curve cost for new users simply exceeds the cost per license. For high-paying employees, a couple hours learning this stuff will cost them a couple hours of productivity. Evidently, large corporations don't function with this in mind.

I've also done quite a stint at IBM, and I can tell you there is nothing easier than getting approval for a software license. The max it'll take is 1-2 days for basically anything you want. Obviously your tech writer friend wasn't too important if he couldn't even get a license for Office. Also, I had a friend in tech writing, and they didn't use Office; Instead, they used some sort of XML mark-up for designing documents.

To abossy's point, I know the tech writer in question, and remember the struggles she had to get a simple piece of software. I don't think it should matter "how important" she was -- if she needs it to do her job, she should get it. IBM's policy cost them more in her un-productivity than it saved in the license cost.

This is a more accurate description although it's not news as this has been policy for about a year now!

perhaps, but it's about time they dumped M$ considering they acquired lotus in 1995!