In the same spirit, I hope you won't take offense as I dissect your arguments. To answer your question, I'm not a manager or an executive. I'm a developer in a small (150 people in 5 cities) firm and a consultant to a slightly larger firm who gets called on to make assessments of tool purchases on a semi-regular basis. I've also been an OSS developer in the past and will probably be one again in the future.
> Fact 1: you WILL spend the same amount in "lost productivity" because of > "training" if you are upgrading to a new version of MS Office, especially if > they have changed enough around to confuse folks. While the amount may be > some bit smaller, you still have an amount, and it needs to be factored in. > I think what you'll find is that training someone to use OOo doesn't cost all > that much more than training them to use MSO 12. Here's my assessment of what needs retraining in MSO-12: new UI and contextual menus. To move to OOo, we would have to train on all the higher-end bits that differ in form from MSO-11--mail merge, redlining, pivot tables, macros...and the list goes on. Speaking of macros, we'd have to redo every macro we currently support on MSO-11 and completely rework some of our COM and .NET-based components that are accessed by them. Even if we moved to OOo, we'd still be stuck with Outlook. Two deal-killers for potential Outlook replacements are the inability to import a PST file with any degree of regularity and the inability of Google toolbar or Lookout to navigate other e-mail clients. If we don't get rid of Outlook, the difference in price point for all of MSO-12 is a lot less attractive. > Fact 2: This message demonstrates (by way of example, not that the post is > suffering from this) the complete lack of long term thinking that screws up > major businesses today. And this "fact" demonstrates the lack of business acumen that goes into a lot of OOo evangelism. The TCO projections I do have a two-year timeline, meaning that we expect to have to do them all over again every two years when MS comes out with a new version of Office. But, moving to a less-popular product has a cost over time that does not approach zero. Trying to find employees who are power users of even products like Lotus 1-2-3 is a thankless task. With OOo, it would be cheaper to hire somebody who knew nothing and train them than to look for people who already know the tool. Hiring is expensive. Oh, and forget about using temps. You want to bring somebody in for a day of redlining to speed up a process? Not if they're going to take an hour of their time and an hour of your time to learn it. > Fact 3: This message also demonstrates (again, by way of example) the lack of > "Big Picture" thinking that execs are always trying to make us peons think > they're doing. Why? Because it completely lacks the foresight to realize > that once you keep on this upgrade path with MSO you lose access to old docs > unless you spend big $$$$ and Time manually keeping them up to date in doc > format. My copy of MS Word opens files from every version of Word since DOS, including Mac formats. What version are you using that doesn't open them and convert them when you save? In fact, it opens pretty much everything but OOo files. > Fact 4: "Lost Productivity" due to switching is nearly a myth, because it > assumes those workers would have actually been doing something productive > during the times you were training them, or that they were all that affective > in working with MSO software to begin with. :-D This is the lighter side of > things. Seriously, its not really "lost" productivity anyway. Yes its true, > while they are in training they are not productive at all, but its an > investment, not a clear loss!!!! If by spending 20,000 dollars training a > group of people to use a free Software package I save 100,000+ dollars over > the next 4 years, I have more than recuperated my losses. True OOo will have > its patches, and upgrades, just like MSO, but think about this, when the next > version of OOo comes out how much will it cost to upgrade, will you be forced > to upgrade, and will you lose access to older docs and have to spend time > converting them? If I kept the same employees and didn't ever upgrade OOo, the cost might approach zero. Otherwise, having a less popular tool on the desk adds to my hiring costs and training costs. > Fact 5: "TCO" is nebulous at best, and can be skewed in any direction the > person putting the figures together wants it to go, and in my opinion nearly > impossible to nail down to any exact figure. TCO is a very effective analytical tool, provided you apply the same rules to both sides. It's potentially nebulous, but still quantifiable--a characteristic of the majority of planning data. > Fact 6: "We need to be able to exchange documents with other companies" is a > flimsy excuse, and never a reason. Its the last ditch effort of a lost cause > that makes everyone go "uh, we can't make our suppliers switch." Listen, OOo > does a very decent job opening and saving docs in MS format. NO, not > perfect, but very good. Not only that, if I'm paying company A good money to > do business with me, asking them to download a free Suite to interact with me > isn't asking much. The conversion is fine except when it isn't. OOo can be set up to always export to Office format, but that can lead to problems with internal documents. Not setting it to default causes a problem every time someone forgets and sends an OOo format file. (I've got a client who, every time he wants to send me a new picture for his website, sends it to me in PDF form and simply refuses to understand how to open a ZIP file.) As for telling your suppliers to suck it up, install the software, and swallow the cost of retraining their employees to use the new tool in order to do business with you, this can work if you're a big enough company. But, sometimes, you're the supplier and your customers may be in a position to tell you to get stuffed. --Jekke --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
