On Wednesday 18 May 2005 04:07 pm, Chad Smith wrote: > 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.
High retraining costs are a common misconception. From my book: (by the way, the office suite wasn't OO.o in the Relevantive study, but it is the only study of this kind to my knowledge that actually measured productivity when faced with a change to a Linux desktop. I believe we should expect similar results with OO.o. And as someone else implied, banning eBay for a week would make up for any lost productivity, then some!) ----------------------------- Gartner Group has claimed that retraining costs of migrating average end users from Microsoft Office to StarOffice would be $1200 per user. If this figure was correct, then a migration might save money over the long term, but there would be significant training costs at the start of the migration, negating any immediate benefit. Their analysis appears to have been flawed, however, in light of a more recent study by Relevantive (relevantive.de), user interface specialists from Germany. This detailed study, with actual non-technical participants, found that users were nearly as productive on Linux as they were on Windows XP, having no previous experience with either. In this study, two groups of average computer users were asked to complete a series of tasks common in a work setting, such as handling email and word processing. One group was given Windows XP, Office XP, and Outlook. The other was given the SUSE Linux version 8.2 desktop. Neither group had experience with the platform provided, although all had previous computer experience in an office environment. Neither group was provided with any training before beginning the tasks. The researchers found that the Linux group was 88% as productive as the Windows group, with no training, as measured by the time it took participants to complete the assigned tasks. Most participants claimed that it would take about one week to become as fully productive as they normally are using Windows. This study is solid proof that Linux is ready for the desktops of non-technical users. Your costs associated with training for end users are likely to be limited to extra internal mentoring and support time at the beginning of the switch. > > 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. > > 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. > > Most office workers make more than minimum wage, usually many times > that. So let's say $15 an hour (that's only $31,200 a year) - but at > $15 an hour, switching to OpenOffice.org would *COST* the company > $34,000 or $170 per seat. > > 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? > > 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. > > -Chad Smith > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Maria Winslow Open Source Analyst 919-968-7802, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Author, "The Practical Manager's Guide to Open Source", http://windows-linux.com/practicalOpenSource Contributing Editor, LinuxWorld Magazine Practical Open Source http://winslow.linuxworld.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
