Whether your organization is a die-hard Microsoft shop or is looking for the first opportunity to ditch the Microsoft Windows operating systems and Office productivity suite – or anywhere in between – there is no good reason why someone in your organization should not be keeping an eye on the free and easily downloadable OpenOffice.org productivity suite.

The OpenOffice.org offering

OpenOffice.org software is a productivity suite that includes a word processor, along with a spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing program. It is a direct competitor to Microsoft Office and its well-known components Word, Excel, and PowerPoint* (the analogous OpenOffice.org apps are WRITER, CALC, and IMPRESS). OpenOffice.org apps can use their own open XML file format; can open and save files in Microsoft Office formats; and can save documents in the popular, cross-platform PDF file format.

Other important facts about OpenOffice.org:

• It is open source. OpenOffice.org is open source software, which means, among other things, that anyone can download it for free and examine and enhance its internal software code. For those who wish to redistribute the software for free or for a fee – in its original form or with enhancements – there are two licenses to choose from.
  
  
• Sun donated the original software. Sun Microsystems, a vocal Microsoft competitor, bought a German software company that had originally developed what has now become OpenOffice.org. Sun helped create the independent organization for maintaining and enhancing the suite, and it continues to contribute OpenOffice.org code enhancements.
  
  
• StarOffice is a commercial repackaging of OpenOffice.org. Sun offers its own enhanced version of the suite, called StarOffice, which includes extras, such as a database program and a configuration tool for tasks like disabling certain features for users. While there are no other major commercial versions of OpenOffice.org, there is no reason – beyond the time, money, and interest required – that vendors like IBM, Oracle, or Apple couldn’t offer their own versions.
  
  
• It works on many operating systems. OpenOffice.org 1.1 is available for major operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (using Apple’s X11 add-on software), and Sun’s Solaris. StarOffice costs $79.95 at retail (Sun charges $25 to $60 for organizations, depending on volume) and is supported on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

Evaluating OpenOffice.org

We can’t imagine any plausible reason for an organization not to keep its eye on, if not formally evaluate, OpenOffice.org. After all, it’s free, and it’s an alternative to an expensive software suite that is on almost every corporate, nonprofit, educational, and government PC.

But getting excited about a free software alternative is one thing; deciding that it’s viable for your organization is another. When evaluating OpenOffice.org’s applicability to your organization, areas to focus on include:

• Office compatibility. This is easy to test at a high level -- just install OpenOffice.org and open your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Look for problems with complex spreadsheets and templates for presentation files. There is no doubt that you will find some compatibility issues, but they should not necessarily doom an OpenOffice.org deployment. Organizations need to balance the benefits of 100% Office compatibility with the overall benefits of a low-cost alternative productivity suite.
  
  Companies that experience minor compatibility issues may want to download a free evaluation copy of StarOffice. Sun says that missing fonts, especially on non-Windows systems, are the cause of many compatibility issues and points out that StarOffice provides additional fonts.
  
  
• Training and support requirements. The cost of training and support is always a huge issue when contemplating a shift to alternative software. Diminished user productivity can wipe out any gains realized from a low-cost competitor. But organizations need to be realistic. Upgrades within the Office family itself require training, too. For example, if companies roll out Office 2003 and implement its document control system, they will have to educate users on how to protect documents and prepare for calls to the support desk when files won’t open.
  
  We expect OpenOffice.org training to be increasingly available over the next year. Sun offers its own training for StarOffice, and we expect that those supporting OpenOffice.org rollouts, such as IBM, will offer training for both novice productivity suite users and for people accustomed to Office.
  
  
• Software deployment and management. Rolling out software to thousands of desktops and laptops can be an incredibly expensive process. Even if a company finds that OpenOffice.org makes sense from a compatibility and training and support standpoint, a switch could be derailed because of the inability to cost-effectively deploy the suite and then manage the thousands of installations.
  
  Investing in desktop management tools from companies like Sun and Novell may be critical for making the move to OpenOffice.org a viable strategy.

Despite real issues, the benefits are compelling

With many hurdles to overcome to justify moving from Office to OpenOffice.org, why would an organization make the switch? Because OpenOffice.org is:

• Inexpensive to acquire. Acquisition costs are only the tip of the iceberg when buying software. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a buzzword for finding out what software really costs when you factor in related things like user productivity, training, and support. But while the merits of various TCO models are hotly debated, even Microsoft can’t deny that a free productivity suite – or even one costing $25 for each seat – is not something to ignore.
  
  In addition, for companies that balk at buying a multiyear license from Microsoft to get the best deal on Office, OpenOffice.org will be an attractive alternative.
  
  
• Open for perusal and modification. In an era of worms, viruses, and related security patches, organizations may find comfort in being able to examine the source code of the suite themselves – or relying on countless other vendors and developers to do so for them. Organizations may also be excited by the opportunity to customize the suite by modifying or enhancing the software code.
  
  
• Based on an open file format. Microsoft file formats are de facto standards because of the ubiquity of Office. And while Microsoft provides an optional XML-based file format, it maintains control of that format. In contrast, the default file format for OpenOffice.org is also based on XML but is being shepherded by the vendor-neutral standards group OASIS.

For some people, the fact that OpenOffice.org is not a Microsoft product will be an extremely compelling reason for them to investigate it. In particular, many non-US governments and companies are eager to quit sending millions to Microsoft while having to rely on an American vendor and its proprietary file formats.

Even for die-hard Microsoft shops, OpenOffice.org should be beneficial. Letting your software rep know you are testing OpenOffice.org should help you lower your Office costs -- just like the old trick of placing a competitor’s coffee mug on your desk when the IBM mainframe salesperson stopped by.

Trying out OpenOffice.org is the pragmatic decision

We are not advocating an exodus to OpenOffice.org. Whether it makes sense to use it today – or in two years – in your organization will be determined by your own business and IT criteria. But we are advocating a mass evaluation and effort to experience this alternative productivity suite (or its StarOffice sibling).

Would your organization ignore an offer for free paper and pens? Sometimes offers are too good too be true, and sometimes they come with strings that make them untenable. But occasionally, that too-good-to-be-true deal is in fact a good deal. OpenOffice.org is, at the very least, good enough to download and evaluate for a few hours.

You can certainly bet that Microsoft executives and the Office development team have taken the time to download and examine it, so why not you?

About Office:

* The Office brand encompasses a wide range of software products (Access, Excel, FrontPage, InfoPath, Live Communications Server, Live Meeting, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Portal Server, Visio, and Word), but the Office productivity suite -- the latest release is called Office 2003 -- comes with only a few of these applications. While there are a variety of editions, most Office suite configurations include Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. [Back to text]

Useful links:

OpenOffice.org download page

StarOffice 7 Office Suite download page

Office 2003 Professional Edition Evaluation Kit order form (it will be mailed to you; you must pay for shipping)