Questions To Consider

What You Should Think About Before Installing LibreOffice & OpenOffice in the Enterprise
Who supports LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org? What is the phone number to call when a mission critical application breaks? What is the support model? Who fixes bugs when they are found? Who do you escalate an issue with when you need help? Who adds features when technology warrants a change? Who delivers training? Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide features that make it ready for the mobile world? How are LibreOffice / OpenOffice file formats going to work with the growing number of mobile devices that enterprise IT managers are being forced to manage? Do they have a mobile edition like Microsoft Office Mobile? Do they have integration issues between documents created in the mobile base platform vs the PC base platform? Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide Cloud or Online services? What if you have users that need a productivity solution in the cloud? What if you need a hybrid solution? Can you get the same productivity interface in the cloud? Can you be sure when an issuea rises that it will get fixed in time?

City Estimates 27 percent cost savings for Microsoft vs. Mixed Environment with OpenOffice. City of Reykjavik, Iceland

A hugely disproportionate 30 percent of our IT resources was required for a period of months to service Open Source to the detriment of other users. Beyond this, an estimated 25 percent of additional staff time was routinely required to install and maintain Open Source-based systems. David Stirling, ICT Manager, Central Scotland Police

I consider myself a power user of Microsoft Office, but I spent several hours a week for a month looking through online forums and blogs to get proficient with OpenOffice.org Ria Xenja, Educator, Orange County Public Schools

How secure is LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org? When a security risk is found in LibreOffice who fixes it? Who pushes patches to fix security or bugs as they're found? Does it have rights management services? Where is the roadmap for LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org? How many developers work on the project? How fast will the security issues encountered be addressed? How long will it take before users are informed?

Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide management features ? If the installation fails, do they enable rollback? Do they have the feature to alert the user if there are any current update or security patches that could raise a red flag on the user application? Does it support bug fix as patches or a complete reinstall? Doe they have a "Migration Planning Manager" utility that enables desktop administrators to scan any client machine, file server, SharePoint server or any other WebDAV-enabled document library and helps administrators discover compatibility issues during deployment planning? Do they have a well documented online resources that offer step-by-step guides, scenarios and roadmaps to help deploy the office suite? Do they support "Administrative Installation Points" where the source installation files are stored in a dedicated place on the network? Do they have "Save My Settings Wizard" which enables users to save their settings directly to a file or up to the Web where they can easily access and apply them to another machine so that users no longer have to recreate their settings on a second machine (such as a machine at home) or a new machine? Do they have an environment assessment tool to understand potential risks before installing?

Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org support collaboration? Does it have peer to peer collaboration? Does it have offline collaboration (e.g. email, document sharing) that can be synced once online? Does it support online collaboration? Will it support simultaneous remote coauthoring? (in every app? Theres is only calc) Does it support contextual collaboration?

Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide rich features and friendly usability ? How important is it for your presentations and reports to be appealing? How much work does it take to correct the graphics on imported documents? Does it support tablet hand writing? Does it support speech commands? Does it have accessibility features such as integration with screen readers and magnifiers? Does LibreOffice offer note taking capabilities like OneNote in Microsoft Office 2013 across PC, phone and browser? Does it provide accessbility and support for handicapped people?

Questions To Consider
What You Should Think About Before Installing LibreOffice & OpenOffice in the Enterprise
Microsoft Office 2010 boosts Indian IT firms productivity by 30 percent. Srinivasa Rao, Managing Director, NecX

With Microsoft Office Professional 2010, not only were our needs for secure collaboration met, we also knew that we would have the support we need to address any issues. The integration of the suite, the updates and the security made it so simple to get answers from a knowledge base that is impeccable. John Perkins, Founder and Owner, Defence Firm, Basic Black, LLC

There are fewer features in OpenOffice.org compared to Microsoft Office. It doesnt have programs functionally equivalent to Visio, it doesnt have Project, it doesnt have Outlook and it doesnt have OneNote. This is a significant loss for the end-user, who loses efficiency in his or her day-to-day routine. For us, this loss represents a significant cost, since it means that we must have more employees to do the same tasks. Jorge Ferreira, IT Director, Nanium

How well will LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org interoperate with your current applications? Does LibreOffice provide BI Integration like in Microsoft Office 2013? Will all of your current documents or MS Office Files open and run in LibreOffice? Try it and see if tables, fields and graphics actually show up where they're supposed to be located. Will your Microsoft Office users be able to reliably share documents with LibreOffice users? Does it sacrifice performance and/or security? Will the complex engineering and financial functions built with Microsoft Office work on LibreOffice? When opening Microsoft Office documents in LibreOffice will there be formatting issues? Does LibreOffice support the concept of presence which is found in Microsoft Office 2013 products (with Microsoft Lync)? Does copying and pasting across applications causes any issue? Crashes? Or Data/Formatting issues? ODF and file format: What is LibreOffices roadmap for file format and ISO standards?

Do your current development tools and programmers support LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org? Who will you call if you want customization? Does it have "Integration with Servers" allowing server developers to define custom workflows for data and content, create document-handling processes, help users collaborate through portals and workspaces with custom reports, views, and tools, and connect users to information in any business system in an enterprise? Does it have over 1000 partners who provide custom solutions that range from broad, horizontal solutions covering deployment, manageability, portal integration and others, and vertical integration for legal, finance, health care, etc.?

For more information on Why Microsoft Office vs. Open Office.org, http://www.whymicrosoft.com/openoffice For more information on Microsoft, www.microsoft.com For Microsoft case studies, www.microsoft.com/casestudies

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