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F E A T U R E



A Look at Microsoft Office Alternatives

Dump Office, Save Cash!

Can your organization cut costs and maintain productivity with a Microsoft Office alternative? We offer a road map to making the switch to a free alternative.
- By Jonathan Feldman

   

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As the unholy offspring of Dr. Phil and Suze Orman might say, a costly relationship can make or break your fiscal health. As good stewards of budgetary dollars, IT professionals must always be re-evaluating service- and software-provider relationships. A business can't afford to be married to any one solution. Why, then, is Microsoft Office a sacred cow in many organizations?

From our perspective--both from speaking with organizations that have made the move and from having gone through sacred-cow change processes like this--it's not so much a question of whether organizations should use free office-suite software, but rather how much to use and when. When you consider the cost of the incumbent Microsoft software (a couple of hundred dollars per license) and multiply that by hundreds or thousands of licenses, it becomes clear it's not a matter of justifying the switch, but rather explaining the additional expense of keeping Microsoft Office around.

Think you know Microsoft from OpenOffice?
TAKE A GUESS AT THESE OFFICE SUITE PROGRAMS

WORD PROCESSING :: SPREADSHEETS :: CALENDARS :: E-MAIL :: PRESENTATION

Although you're likely to meet resistance from multiple corners when evaluating whether to leave Microsoft Office, if you do decide that the significant financial benefits of switching outweigh the reasons for sticking with Office, there are guideposts to follow to make the migration manageable (see "9 Steps to a Successful Open-Office Migration" in the image gallery).

Continue Reading This Story...

IMAGE GALLERY
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NWC REPORTS
bullet Office Alternatives
Office-Suite Alternatives now offer comparable capabilities and can cut costs.




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