Seizing opportunities to go open source
Russell Dyer
Published: 04 Nov 2003 11:45 GMT
Microsoft has told us it's successful because it makes better products at cheaper prices. However, Microsoft Office can now be matched on quality and beaten on price by Ximian's Evolution and Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice, the free version of StarOffice. Combined, they are said to be the first open source contenders against the formidable Microsoft Office product and its approximately 90-percent desktop market share. And now that Microsoft has begun pressuring businesses to pay licensing fees, the environment is particularly primed for open source to take some of that market share. All that's left is for proponents of open source to familiarise themselves with these products and learn how to promote them in a way that business people can understand.
A common scenario
Let's look at a common scenario playing out in many companies. Suppose you're an IT manager at a small company that's a subsidiary of a much larger company. Your office has 150 computers, of which 100 are used by a few shifts of customer-service personnel. These workers only use Microsoft Internet Explorer as an interface to an in-house program on the server that your department developed. The other 50 computers are used by office workers who primarily run Microsoft Office 97. Five of these computers also have a Microsoft Windows-based accounting program installed. Almost all of the computers were purchased with Microsoft Windows 95 pre-installed, but they've all been upgraded over time to Microsoft Windows 98 using five licensed copies that came with five newer computers that were purchased a while back. At this point, the users are fairly content with the software, and they politely ignore comments you make occasionally about the merits of open-source software.
A new development
Now let's suppose your CIO receives a certified letter from Microsoft requesting that he conduct a self-audit of the office's software licenses and stating that the company must purchase any missing licenses within 30 days. The letter also says that if he is unwilling to perform a self-audit, Microsoft's legal department is ready to petition the local court to allow it to do the audit and possibly follow up with a lawsuit for any copyright law violations. Your CIO has already called his boss and he was told to comply. He was also told that license purchases will come out of his office's budget. Your CIO is upset and asks you to make a quick assessment of what it will cost to get in compliance.
You count the five Microsoft Windows 98 licenses and the one Microsoft Office 97 license. You check with one of your favourite software vendors, and you find out that you can get away with upgrading to Microsoft Windows XP (the Win98 licenses are the same price), but you'll have to buy the full standard version of Microsoft Office XP since you don't want to pay an on-going licensing fee. With rough prices in hand, you're able to whip together a calculation to give to the CIO (see Figure A).
Figure A
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After staring at these numbers and realising that his bonus is lost, he says that he had no idea that it would be so much. A brief, pointless discussion ensues as to how it got to be so much, before he asks if there is any way around it. For the first time in the five years that you've been working there, your CIO is open to discussing open source. You pitch Evolution, OpenOffice, and Linux. You compare them to their Microsoft counterparts and explain the cost. You bring him over to your PC, which has these programs installed on it, and let him try them out. He's impressed and comments that they seem easy to use.
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