Microsoft Office and IBM are no longer best pals, according to a new initiative by the latter to rid its computers of the Windows-producing giant's popular system.

According to IBM, it is undertaking the strategy in order to promote its own suite of productivity tools, Lotus Symphony, which draws heavily on the work of Sun Microsystems and its OpenOffice offering.

Many believe the shift is in order to show the firm has enough faith in the suite to market it more efficiently and credibly to small businesses in IT.

Those IBM employees still wanting to use Microsoft Office will have to clear it with their manager if they are to continue with their escapades on the popular word processing and spreadsheet provider.

Last month, Microsoft announced that the newest release of Office will have expanded anti-piracy checks to ensure that users are utilising a licensed version of the popular program.

According to a recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent).