... > > The likely costs of the > > complete conversion of say 4000+ seats worth of documents will no doubt > > exceed the MS licensing costs > > That depends on the nature of the use and it will be different in > different circumstances. Even if in the short term the cost exceeds the > license fees, in the longer term it might not and its not a gamble if > you do the calcualtions and planning. Just as businesses invest up front > in other long term savings they might well choose to do so in this > field. The economics depend on individual circumstances.
There can be a lot of guessing here, so having a realistic assessment of the costs of migration is very important. If you take the time to investigate how many macros you actually have and what it would cost to transition, then you can show management a cost per seat of NOT transitioning. Take the following scenario, for example: - 200 licenses for Office at a cost of $66,000 (approximate OEM cost) - 10 macros that will cost a total of $20,000 to transition - A necessary upgrade that will cost just slightly more to deploy OO.o vs. Office (internal deployment, let's say $5000 for added time to deploy) So the total savings is $41,000 if you transition to OO.o. This means that the cost of KEEPING THE STATUS QUO is $205 per seat. The question to then ask management is - is this worth it? Are we getting an extra $205 per seat in value by sticking with the status quo? This can be a powerful argument, but you do have to investigate the costs in order to put it together. I wrote an article for LinuxWorld Magazine a while back covering some of this, see "Evaluating the Return on Investment of Open Source on the Desktop" (freely available at http://windows-linux.com/articles/DesktopROI.html). I also have a book out now for technical managers and open source advocates that goes into more detail on how to evaluate the ROI of open source, plus case studies and listings of production-ready projects. OO.o is featured heavily. The book is "The Practical Manager's Guide to Open Source", (http://windows-linux.com/practicalOpenSource/index.html). Maria > > > By having reliable document conversion and more importantly macro > > conversion, OO.o could really take over the world. Corporates could > > move across without the same level of risk. At the end of the day, in > > the business world, corporates dictate the standards and smaller > > companys follow and Joe average follows them and Auntie May follows > > what Joe Average recommends. > > So Novell and Sun have migrated. Start of the process. Others will > migrate when they believe they are ready. In the meantime OO.o will > improve with regard to document conversion and probably macro conversion > but the rate depends on who contributes to the project. As more > migration takes place hopefully more resources will come into these > things. > > > The time and effort to make OO.o able to do this may seem considerable > > but the results will transform the OO.o world and this in turn will do > > amazing things to the general view of Open Source software. OO.o is > > great because it allows people to try Open Source software without > > having to go the whole hog and installing a new platform. It gives them > > a chance to be convinced. > > But we have limited resources. That is the entire limiting factor. What > is required is for some large corporate or even government to have the > same vision and put the relatively small amount of resource in. It > hasn't happened --- yet. While the long term outcome is inevitable, the > timescales of getting there are uncertain. > > > At present, I would not recommend OO.o to any company unless it is a > > startup > > I think you are wrong. There are plenty of non-startups using OOo quite > happily. I would not recommend OOo to a company for which it is > inappropriate because it tends to do more harm than good but its wrong > to assume all non-startup are very dependent on macros. > > > in which case I would push strongly for it. If the conversion > > issues were properly resolved, I would recommend it to all companys big > > and small. > > > > Why do you care? The more users of an Open Source product, the more > > Open Source standards are used and therefore the standards become > > universal. > > Yes, we have to eat the elephant a bite at a time. > -- > Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Maria Winslow Open Source Analyst 919-968-7802, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Author, "The Practical Manager's Guide to Open Source", http://windows-linux.com/practicalOpenSource Contributing Editor, LinuxWorld Magazine Practical Open Source http://winslow.linuxworld.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
