Need to be careful with the 'could save lots of money' thing
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| d0nk3y Jun 13, 2009 5:29 PM EDT |
We have recently gone through various presentations for Microsofts new 3 year Enterprise Agreements due to start this year. It's fair to say that most in our organisation (with anything to do with it) agree that we need to find ways to reduce our dependancy on Microsofts products. One of the things we intend to look at is this very question - can we live without Office, or at least reduce the number of licenses we need of it. Unfortunately, the way the Enterprise Agreements are run, pulling Office out of the stack results in a loss of the discount structure across all the other products. It would seem, in effect, you don't end up saving much - if anything by doing this (though I have yet to actually run that scenario precisely using actual financial data). For that reason, I suspect I'll actually be leaning more on the 'we need to move away from vendor lock-in' argument than the 'we could save a bunch of money' argument. |
| bigg Jun 13, 2009 5:57 PM EDT |
One argument I've seen used is that the company might not necessarily save much on copies at the office, but all employees will always have access to the latest version of OOo on their home computers. Having some employees with the latest version, others with no version, and still others with an old version is a headache. |
| d0nk3y Jun 13, 2009 10:41 PM EDT |
That's a very good point bigg - thank you. Especially as one of the Software Assurance "benefits" is that your staff can use Office at home for $20 each (media cost basically). |
| jdixon Jun 13, 2009 11:21 PM EDT |
> Unfortunately, the way the Enterprise Agreements are run, pulling Office out of the stack results in a loss of the discount structure across all the other products. In other words, they're giving Office away to ensure continued lock-in. |
| gus3 Jun 13, 2009 11:54 PM EDT |
Quoting:they're giving Office away to ensure continued lock-in.Which is an indicator of their desperation, because the Office division of MS is their only profitable division in the last N years... (according to a recent LXer/Glyn Moody posting; too tired now to find it) EDIT: Found the Glyn Moody article: http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?blo... And I mis-stated that the Office division is the only profitable division; I should have stated that it is MS's most profitable division. |
| krisum Jun 14, 2009 6:04 AM EDT |
Quoting: Unfortunately, the way the Enterprise Agreements are run, pulling Office out of the stack results in a loss of the discount structure across all the other products. It would seem, in effect, you don't end up saving much - if anything by doing this (though I have yet to actually run that scenario precisely using actual financial data).My company recently moved to OpenOffice completely since an upgrade to Office2007 from 2003 was necessary (due to license expiration) and that would have cost a lot of money. So probably it needs to be analysed as to when it actually saves money, and I suspect that apart from some rare scenarios it will always save lot of money particularly for normal employee desktops/workstations. |
| jdixon Jun 14, 2009 8:59 AM EDT |
> So probably it needs to be analysed as to when it actually saves money, and I suspect that apart from some rare scenarios it will always save lot of money... Well, here come those infamous words: It depends. In a case such as d0nk3y is discussing, where you are talking a fairly large corporation, an Enterprise Agreement may be the way to go, and in such a case the marginal cost of the next license for pretty much ANY Microsoft product is negligible, and the cost of not using the Microsoft product becomes high. Now, were I in such a position, I personally would never sign such an Enterprise Agreement, because it gives Microsoft way too much control over my company (in particular, the auditing requirements come to mind), but on a purely cost analysis basis, it's the way to go. But then were I in such a position, the business would be running Linux on the desktop and using something like Citrix or Crossover Office for our required Windows programs support. There would undoubtedly be some Windows use for specific applications, but it would be kept to a minimum. |
| krisum Jun 14, 2009 9:40 AM EDT |
Quoting: In a case such as d0nk3y is discussing, where you are talking a fairly large corporation, an Enterprise Agreement may be the way to go, and in such a case the marginal cost of the next license for pretty much ANY Microsoft product is negligible, and the cost of not using the Microsoft product becomes high.Well, from what I know my company had an enterprise wide deal for MS Office 2003. Still the cost of moving to Office 2007 was quite high. Maybe there are different deals for different enterprises depending on the size of the enterprise. |
| phsolide Jun 14, 2009 11:58 AM EDT |
Strangely, in my neck of the employment woods, there's NO desire to get away from Microsoft products, even for software that's developed for and runs under Linux/HP-UX/Solaris. For all practical purposes, all documentation is produced in "Word". "Word" itself is pretty bad for technical docs, in that it insists on capitalizing the first word of "sentences" no matter how hard you try to turn this mis-feature off, which is a disaster for source code. In Java, for example, "boolean" and "Boolean" are quite different. In C++ "string" and "String" can have different meanings. I've seen source code for both examples HOSED by the auto-capitalization. Another place "Word" falls down is the inability to "diff" two versions. Sure, you can turn on that hokey red "who marked up what, and when" thing, but it renders the document unreadable, and it only works inside "Word". You can't get what changed between v1.7 and v1.8 of a given document. This alone would eliminate ANY OTHER PRODUCT from consideration. But we give MSFT a break on it. But if you bring this up, most people give you the equivalent of a blank stare, a very few say "I've never thought of that". The architects/managers/chief engineers who should rule against "Word" for technical docs just say something like "Any product can be mis-used." Well, you stinkers never fail to rule against the use of CVS in favor of some costly, nearly useless version control system, so why not rule against "Word"? You can't 'cause you've been bought out/bribed to accept it. |
| jdixon Jun 14, 2009 12:28 PM EDT |
> Still the cost of moving to Office 2007 was quite high. There can be lots of reasons for that not necessarily related to the price of the software. As I understand it, with current Enterprise agreements, you're supposed to be able to upgrade at any time with no licensing cost. Are you sure your business wasn't using a Select License? > Maybe there are different deals for different enterprises depending on the size of the enterprise. I believe Enterprise Agreements are negotiated per customer from a set base. So yes, I believe exact details may very. The base information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-options/enterpr... |
| d0nk3y Jun 14, 2009 3:49 PM EDT |
>Well, from what I know my company had an enterprise wide deal for MS Office 2003. Still the cost of moving to
>Office 2007 was quite high. Maybe there are different deals for different enterprises depending on the size of
>the enterprise. It sounds to me that while an enterprise wide deal, it was likely not the MS Enterprise Agreement. To have a large cost to upgrade from one version of Office to another, would mean that Software Assurance (maintenance) was not being paid on the Office licenses - which effectively means an organisation in that scenario would need to re-purchase all the non-SA Office licenses, hence the very high cost. The MS Select agreement is an 'enterprise-wide' deal which allows the choice NOT to pay SA on a product set. Good grief, now I'm sounding like I've actually been on the MS Licensing course/certification track. Don't get me started on *that* wee gem..... |
| d0nk3y Jun 14, 2009 3:58 PM EDT |
> "Word" itself is pretty bad for technical docs.. phsolide, we have found the same thing - though not in the 'technical docs' category, but in dealing with very large but not overly-complicated docs (400-500 pages, tables, photos, formatting (TOCs etc). Our science and secretarial staff would *love* a tool they could work with very long documents in that doesn't periodically dump all the formatting just because you saved and closed the document... They tried the Master Document feature once but that just introduced more complexity and still dumped the formatting intermittently. Our then IT Manager even spent a whole heap of time on the phone with Microsoft trying to get them to fix it. They couldn't find the answer and basically suggested that if we went to the then latest version (2003), the problems would all vanish in a wonderous cloud of I'm-running-the-latest-version smoke. They didn't. jdixon; brilliant point about the versioning (ie. show me the changes between two versions X versions ago) - I would hope whatever document management tool we decide on will handle that kind of function. |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 14, 2009 4:05 PM EDT |
I have no personal experience with enterprise agreements. What I have seen is the agonies of several small (less than 100) firms who realize that they have to keep licenses organized and correctly matching for every install of every MS software package. It's practically a full-time position. Taking this cost into consideration, the F/OSS side is a simple $0. |
| jdixon Jun 14, 2009 4:32 PM EDT |
> jdixon; brilliant point about the versioning (ie. show me the changes between two versions X versions ago) I agree, but it was phsolide's point, not mine. |
| jhansonxi Jun 14, 2009 5:10 PM EDT |
In an TLLTS interview I heard a while ago, Solveig Haugland (OOo trainer/book author) uses Adobe Framemaker as it is better for very large works than a word processor. LaTeX is another option. |
| d0nk3y Jun 14, 2009 5:24 PM EDT |
>I agree, but it was phsolide's point, not mine. Oops - my apologies jdixon. Must remember to engage the brain better! >Taking this cost into consideration, the F/OSS side is a simple $0. I agree Bob - it's a fact I point out to our MS LAR (Microsoft Large Account Reseller) just about every time I see them... |
| tracyanne Jun 14, 2009 8:17 PM EDT |
and the MS LAR says? |
| d0nk3y Jun 14, 2009 8:43 PM EDT |
*grin* Basically that blank stare thing that phsolide was talking about..... There's this great quote out there that sums that up...hang on a sec - ahhh, here it is: "It's impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair" |
| jacog Jun 15, 2009 3:31 AM EDT |
I think whatever tricks Microsoft are using to keep people locked in to using Office are working well, because it seems there are loads of people who feel they absolutely HAVE to buy MS Office just so they can accomplish something for which something as straight-forward as Abiword or even Wordpad would suffice, and thus I complete another horrendous run-on sentence, but thanks for reading. |
| tuxchick Jun 15, 2009 10:02 AM EDT |
jacog, maybe it's a marketing thing, like the the people who just HAVE to have Photoshop even though they have little idea what to do with it. So maybe a "OpenOffice is even more bloated than MS Office!" campaign is what we should do :) |
| Bob_Robertson Jun 15, 2009 1:51 PM EDT |
It is, indeed, magnificence in Marketing. If you have a computer, you're using Windows. To write, one uses Office. If there is a hardware problem, it's the fault of the hardware manufacturer not being compatible with your computer. Copy and share an application that has a retail price of $400, since after all how can that other software that's free be worth anything? Masterful Marketing, subtle, self-reinforcing, the best money can buy. |
| hkwint Jun 15, 2009 2:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:like the the people who just HAVE to have Photoshop even though they have little idea what to do with it True. Why have k3b if you can have Nero 33.16 Final Ultimate Business 2010? I know it's true because I used to be like that. Mainly because others told me I 'surely wanted' MS Office 2000 Premium Pro back in '99; and they only charged $5 (fl10) for it. The $5 was almost equal to the cost of the media it came on, and so it came I was introduced to freeware. Because I never paid for any Nero or Microsoft product, I never have been really disappointed with it I guess. |
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