Office 2007 and Vista not automatic selections: analyst

Stan Beer
Monday, 03 April 2006 17:42

IT Industry - Development

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Office 2007 would cost Massachusetts four times Open Office: Quinn

 

A leading IT analyst recommends that organisations seriously evaluate alternatives to upgrading to Microsoft's next generation of products, Office 2007 and Vista.

According to former Meta Group senior analyst, Dr Kevin McIsaac, now of research firm IBRS, organisations should take the window of opportunity presented by Microsoft by not releasing its new products until 2007 to investigate open source and web service desktop alternatives.

IT organisations should take this opportunity, Dr McIsaac says, to review desktop strategy this year and undertake an initiative to understand what users really need from their desktop.

"I recommend organisations compare the cost/risk/benefits of upgrading Windows and Office against a migration to an alternative solution that uses a mixture of Microsoft, open source and web service,” said Dr McIsaac.  "Some companies will use this review to negotiate significantly better licensing terms with Microsoft while others will implement Open Office or Star Office, and so radically change their desktop upgrade cycle and their ongoing desktop cost structure.

"In a recent interview with Peter Quinn, former CIO of the state of Massachusetts, he said when they looked at how staff actually used their desktops 'most of the people don’t use all those advanced features (of MS Office) so it begs the question as to why I would spend all that money.' With the trend to web services (services delivered over the internet) and the availability of MS Office alternatives such as OpenOffice, he seriously questioned the value of remaining on the Microsoft upgrade treadmill."

According to Dr McIsaac, IT organisations have three broad options:

1.      Migrate to Vista and MS Office 2007 in the next 1-3 years. The challenge is to quantify the business benefit of the upgrade;

2.      Extend the life of the existing software until it is no longer supported by Microsoft and then review the upgrade strategy;

3.      Rethink the desktop! That is follow Peter Quinn’s example and assess how your customers actually use their desktop and discover what functionality they really need to do their job.

Dr McIsaac says, "While moving away from the Windows operating system may prove too difficult for most, a move to a MS Office work-a-like such as OpenOffice or StarOffice is much less difficult. The convergence of two significant developments will remove these impediments. These are the cost/complexity of upgrading to Microsoft Office 2007 and the adoption of Open Document Format (ODF)."