on 05/18/05 15:07 'Chad Smith' wrote:
25 Hours? Per user? Do you have any idea how much time that really is? You also seem to be assuming there would be no support materials, no training classes, no internal support of any kind. True, some of those would inch the costs up some, but not a lot. Certainly nowhere near the equivalent of 25 hours per user.On 5/18/05, Maria Winslow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
for example:
- 200 licenses for Office at a cost of $66,000 (approximate OEM cost)
- 10 macros that will cost a total of $20,000 to transition
- A necessary upgrade that will cost just slightly more to deploy OO.o vs. Office (internal deployment, let's say $5000 for added time to deploy)
So the total savings is $41,000 if you transition to OO.o.
This means that the cost of KEEPING THE STATUS QUO is $205 per seat. The question to then ask management is - is this worth it? Are we getting an extra $205 per seat in value by sticking with the status quo?
You leave out the re-education process. Going from MS Office XP to MS Office 2003 does require a slight readjustment period (some icons look different, more buttons on the screen, a few menu choices may have moved) but not as much as it would to go from Office XP to OOo 2.0.
This is a per seat fee, since every single person who uses the program is going to have to learn the new program. Let's say the difference in the amount of time it takes for people's productivity to return to normal when switching from MSO X to MSO X+1 compared to switching from MSO X to OOo X is 25 hours. Now, that's not the first 25 hours of using the program - that's 25 hours of total lost productivity for the life cycle of the office suite. Time wasted searching for - oh let's say the *WORD COUNT* or the *PAGE SETTINGS*. It may only take 5 minutes to walk someone through the process of finding these features, but that's 5 minutes *per* feature, and people rarely remember after less than 5 times of being told.
So, that's 25 hours * the average pay of the office worker * the number of seats - so, in your scenario, that's 25 * 200 * the average hourly wage or $5,000x were x is the hourly wage. Even at $5.15 an hour (minimum wage in the US) that's $25,750. So your "cost" of maintaining the "Status Quo" is cut by more than half.
Not even the most technologically brain-dead user is going to lose 25 hours of productivity when transferring to a new application - particularly when you consider that the less-knowledgeable users are going to use less of the functionality of either application. The more knowledgeable and capable users are also more capable of working through the differences.
I think you grossly underestimate most of the users and grossly overestimate the lost productivity.
But, according to your theory, productivity would drop slightly at first because of the changes. How much? No, I don't know either - but it pulls in that direction, too.BTW, it's by no means accurate to call it maintaining the status quo, because there is an increase in functionality of the software to upgrade from MSO X to MSO X+1.
I have worked help desks and managed help desks. 95% of the questions (some days it's 100%) that users have are about basic things - how do I find "x" in there? Macros, templates, etc. are more advanced than most of the questions that help desks get. Besides, OOo *does* have macros and templates. The others you mention are beyond the vast majority of the functionality that is going to get used - and that's the key. How much of the functionality gets *used*?So, the question to management is - is it worth it? Is it worth $170 per seat to switch to a *free* office system? One that doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the *cheaper* alternative? One that doesn't have *ANY* third party support (ie, macros, templates, hooks, readers, tools, viewers, etc.)? One that doesn't come with on-call professional support? One that doesn't offer 100% compatiblity with their clients or suppilers?
As you can probably tell, I disagree completely. From my use of OOo over the past three years, it has come a long way toward being "ready for prime time." I think you are going to be surprised at the adoption rate over the next 12-18 months.OOo is no where near ready for corporations. Not ones that aren't in direct competition with Microsoft anyway. That's the only reason IBM, Sun, and Novell use OOo - they don't want to use Microsoft.
oldgnome
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