Talking about migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org analysts still question the pros and cons of an enterprise grade switch, citing migration costs and risks.
The Landscape of Migration, by Force Majeure Studios
Stephen Walli citing Christensen reminds that once the vendor starts to over deliver on customer needs, customers can’t absorb (and so don’t want to pay for) new innovation. Office 2007 Total Cost of Ownership seems to confirm Christensen’s theory, at least considering the necessary retraining costs from Office 2003 to Office 2007. So far, so good.
Considering one of the biggest stumbling block to migrating - namely the document migration - semi-automatic solutions are available from 2004. Sun provided Staroffice with a migration-tool, and many (small) open source firms created methodologies and frameworks to accomplish the goal. Despite Gartner and other still consider the issue as a prominent one, my feeling is that is overestimated.
On the contrary I believe that find all applications integrated with Microsoft Office is a major and often underestimated issue. Looking at Microsoft Office Solution directory, even to a specific capability area like Office Business Application, it’s clear how enterprise application integration is central.
Medium and Large Enterprises need an enterprise grade support, partnership costs could be cumbersome, but are a must if you want to address the big guys.
Pentaho adding reporting solution to OpenOffice.org is an appetizer, let’s what we’ll eventually get for dinner..
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