Deploying Open Source

Normally when we go to the supermarket, my wife normally doesn’t like me unpacking the trolley at the register, in case I put things in the wrong order for the checkout chick to pack them (who would have guessed that washing powder shouldn’t be in the same bag as red meat?). So normally what I do is flick through the magazines: checking out whether Jennifer Hawkins and Megan Gale have secret angst, or what recipes are “must do’s”, or what’s the current list of must have free software.

Normally the list of “must have free software” starts with – replace Microsoft Office with Open Office . The list then normally goes on with a whole lot of other bits and pieces, normally cool but useless tools. Now since Microsoft Office can cost you around $850 for the full box and dice, a free alternative isn’t something that should be ignored.

I’ve had a go at replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office in one of my businesses (30 IT staff = near of $25,000 of software), and made some interesting discoveries that I thought I should pass on. Effectively, I discovered 4 rules for a successful change over, all of which are kind of obvious in hindsight. These are of course on top of the standard change management principles, such as getting buy in from staff, plenty of discussion etc, etc.

1. Make sure all your templates are created in Open Office. Obvious yeah? You would be surprised how many templates and base documents we forgot to change over. Any excuse to go back to the bad old ways and people will.

2. Audit peoples computers. When you have a company full of IT literate people, you will be surprised how many will load unlicensed software on their computers if they think they can get away with it (the managing of licensing is a completely different discussion).

3. Make sure you have Microsoft Office on at least one computer. You may think you can go without it, but your business partners probably can’t. There will always be someone whom wants a presentation or spreadsheet in Microsoft Office format. Additionally, you will find that some documents just don’t cleanly transfer from one format to another. “Compatibility with all major software suites” doesn’t necessarily mean that your open office document will look identical if opened by Microsoft Word.

4. Only ever send out text documents on email as PDF’s. Apart from this being good practice, from a layout point of view, it means that your customers won’t know/won’t care whether you are using Open Office.

Now I didn’t have the issue of having to retrain people on the new software (techo’s remember) but I did have a lot more trouble with staff thinking I was wrong and simply wanting to do their own thing. The major lesson was that you may not have to pay for free software, but that doesn’t mean there’s no cost.

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