A 300 page report summarizes the year long ODF Pilot Study conducted by the State of Massachusetts with this same conclussion. The cost of "rip out and replace" is both costly and disruptive. Even when th ereplacement is the open source and free "OpenOffice.org". The key to the study was the many workgroups and workflows based on MSOffice bound business processes. A workgroup document encapsulates these business processes through scripts, macros, OLE, data and media bindings, and security settings. Unless and until OpenOffice desktops can fully participate at this higher level of workgroup oriented workflows, there is no way to successfully implement ODF.
Many mistakenly think that Microsoft adopting ODF as a native MSOffice format will solve the problem. While it's technically possible to capture workflow automation and processing in ODF (the Foundation proved this), that doesn't solve the problem for OpenOffice! Any MSOffice desktop running the da Vinci plug-in could participate in an existing MSOffice busines sprocess. But there was no way to pass these ODF docuemnts to OpenOffice desktops so that they too could be full participants. The MSOffice ODF docuemnts remained unique to MSOffice desktops because of the business processes; not the format.
This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Jun 2008, by Gary Edwards.
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17 Jun 08
Gary EdwardsThis is too funny. While Neelie Kroes is banging the open source - open standards drum, the head of the EU Commissions IT dept is buying Microsoft!
The money quote: "Ellinides said in an interview arranged by a spokeswoman for Commissioner Siim Callas, who oversees procurement, that studies showed the costs of moving to open source outweighed the benefits. He said it may be time for a new study.-
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"For the moment we are working in a Microsoft environment," said Christos Ellinides, director of corporate IT solutions and services, who recommends software for the Commission.
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Ellinides said in an interview arranged by a spokeswoman for Commissioner Siim Callas, who oversees procurement, that studies showed the costs of moving to open source outweighed the benefits. He said it may be time for a new study.
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Many mistakenly think that Microsoft adopting ODF as a native MSOffice format will solve the problem. While it's technically possible to capture workflow automation and processing in ODF (the Foundation proved this), that doesn't solve the problem for OpenOffice! Any MSOffice desktop running the da Vinci plug-in could participate in an existing MSOffice busines sprocess. But there was no way to pass these ODF docuemnts to OpenOffice desktops so that they too could be full participants. The MSOffice ODF docuemnts remained unique to MSOffice desktops because of the business processes; not the format.
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