Im trying to get my school district to allow me to install OpenOffice on my school's computers. Right now I'm emailing the main tech guy at the district and I need to know what to say to destroy his argument.
Here is his inital response:
After a response from me asking clarification he said:I'm very reluctant to move in the direction of Open Office because of serious challenges it would bring with our standard district image and increased bandwidth demand. I understand that compatibility is a challenge, especially since Microsoft moved to an xml-enhanced file structure with Office 2007. However, a better solution that maintains compatibility with the rest of the district and with district images is to install the Office Compatibility Pack on computers with earlier versions of Office.
What I need is evidence/a good argument as to the bolded statement. Do you guys know what he is talking about there?To maintain a support structure that minimizes our TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), we need to ensure that each of the 6000+ workstations have the same standard software suite. So when computers go sideways, often because of incompatibilities with third party software, instead of installing each application separately, we burn a new software image on the computer that includes our district standard suite of software. That includes the Microsoft productivity suite, but also a host of standard drivers that helps everything work together. The bandwidth issue with Open Office is not that we would need to push it over the network, it is that Open Office is designed in such a way that it hits the web more often does the Microsoft product. (Actually, by default Microsoft does the similar stuff, but we can do things down here to control the problems it creates.)
Open Office has some great attributes, and the initial price is certainly right. However, independent research by the Gartner Group has demonstrated that there are significant hidden costs when it comes to training and support. In an enterprise environment, it is more cost effective to stick to a single standard, and at this time, our standard is Microsoft Office.
Any other things to tell him that you think would change his mind would also be appreciated.
I am NOT giving up on getting OOo installed on my school's computers before I graduate (in june).
Thank you!