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Home > Migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice: Case studies |
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Migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice: Case studies |
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| 16 Jul 2007 | SearchEnterpriseLinux.com |
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From the horse's mouth, via this article, you'll hear why two IT managers from two different types of organizations switched from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice 2.0. They'll describe the adventures they had along the way, and what happened when they finally dropped their Microsoft Office licenses into Mount Doom.
They're all saving money, no one's switching back to Microsoft Office, and they're all spending much less on OpenOffice.org expenses than they did Microsoft licenses.
I talked to two different people in two different jobs. Each organization is a different type, and they're at different stages in their transitions. And in order to allow the people I talked to to be as frank as possible, I'm presenting the case studies without specifically identifying the organizations.
- Migrating a city government to OpenOffice: Dave Richards is an IT administrator for a city government. The city has been using OpenOffice.org for about six years. Dave's a Linux guru, and helps run an elegant, efficient Linux network with a nice big server and lots of fairly old dumb terminals running OpenOffice.org at a very acceptable speed.
- Migrating a school district to OpenOffice: Pete Poggione is an IT director for a school district. The school district just switched last year and is still in the process of working out some kinks. Pete took a big risk switching to open source, presenting it in the first year of his job in the school district. He's still firmly in favor of open source and anti-vendor-lockin, but he's learning a lot about what happens when you extract yourself from the Microsoft universe.
From their migrations, some important lessons were learned. Find out what bumps in the road they encountered, and how they managed to overcome the obstacles.
Key points for a successful migration
The stories have their differences, but the common threads seem to emphasize testing, communication and education. And with each of these, do it before you actually begin the full conversion. Training should continue throughout the transition in response to specific tasks users need more information about, but the lesson from all three stories seems to be that installing the OpenOffice.org software on users' desktops should be one of the last things you do.
Test. Do vast amounts of testing and research prior to the transition, with specific documents from across your organization. You will need to be absolutely certain that you're making the right decision to confidently face the resistance you'll encounter.
Communicate. Tell people about the program as early as possible, and make it clear that the transition is happening.
Educate. Don't underestimate the need for documentation and training on OpenOffice.org. Even the smallest item, like a Clue Sheet, can help people not just learn, but have a more receptive attitude toward the transition. Some of the tasks are more difficult in OpenOffice.org, but you can bypass the need for individual users to do the more difficult tasks through specifying the default settings, using templates and outsourcing conversion.
And as you do your own conversion, pass on your lessons learned to others.
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