OpenOffice.org: About Turning OpenOffice.org Migrations into a Business

The OpenOffice.org Italian Association announced that OpenOffice.org in Italy broke the five million mark this year, yet another record for the Italian release of the world’s leading free and open source productivity suite.

Davide Dozza, PLIO’s president commented the result:

Back in 2006, when we started counting OOo downloads, 800,000 downloads per year was an astonishing result to us. At that stage we couldn’t even imagine that the number would have grown to 1.780.000 in 2007, and beyond five millions in 2008.

Even if the number of downloads is not an accurate measure of the market share, it definitely shows the trend.

So said, there is still a lot to do, especially in the business arena. OpenOffice.org has recently started a Business Development Project, managed by Alexandro Colorado, who recently posed questions about how to set standards for OpenOffice.org professionals.

Migrating to OpenOffice.org has a tremendous business potential, but before finding answers we better pose all the good questions. The need for integration, sometimes addressed by Openoffice.org volunteers, is one of the areas where Sun Microsystems should lead the dance. Migration methodologies and toolkits, along with specific partners’ programs enabling OpenOffice.org professionals to deliver ‘productized services‘.

OpenOffice.org community can help a lot, but execution is in the Sun’s hands, though.

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