Consider This What You Should Consider Before Installing Open Office 2.x or 3.x in the Enterprise Kepp Andrews April 17, 2009
Who supports OpenOffice? o What is the phone number to call when a mission critical application breaks? o What is the OpenOffice support model? o Who fixes bugs when they are found? o Who do you escalate an issue with when you need help? o Who adds features when technology warrants a change? o Who delivers training? Does OpenOffice provide management features ? o Does it have a "Setup Controller" or an application that prepares the machine, runs the installation and enables rollback if the process fails? o Does it support bug fix as patches or complete reinstall? o Does it have a "Migration Planning Manager" utility that enables desktop administrators to scan any client machine, file server, SharePoint server or any other WebDAV-enabled document library and helps administrators discover compatibility issues during deployment planning? o Does it have online resources that offer step-by-step guides, scenarios and roadmaps to help deploy the office suite. o Are both local and remote installation options are available? o Does it support "Administrative Installation Points" where the source installation files are stored in a dedicated place on the network? o Does it support LDAP (Active Directory) directory integration for authentication? o Does it have a "Save My Settings Wizard" which enables users to save their settings directly to a file or up to the Web (using Microsoft Passport for authentication) where they can easily access and apply them to another machine. Users no longer have to recreate their settings on a second machine (such as a machine at home) or a new machine? o Does it have "Feature Advertising" where users are notified of pending software installs when logging on to the network? o Does it have "Installation Rollback" so that if an installation is interrupted, the Rollback feature restores the target machine back to its initial state. o Does it have centralized management of security certificates, roaming user profiles, migration support, application error reporting or policy support? Does OpenOffice provide features that make it ready for the mobile world? o How are OpenOffice file formats going to work with the growing number of mobile devices that enterprise IT managers are being forced to manage? o Does it have a mobile edition like Microsoft Mobile Office? o Can you use it from your mobile device like Microsoft Mobile Office? Does OpenOffice support collaboration? o Does it have peer to peer collaboration found with Groove? o Does it have online & offline collaboration that Groove and SharePoint offer? o Does it support online collaboration?
o Will it support simultaneous remote co-authoring? Does OpenOffice provide rich features and friendly usability ? o How important is it for your presentations and reports to be appealing? o How much work does it take to correct the graphics on imported documents? o Does it support a clipboard or smart tags? o Does it support tablet hand writing? o Does it support speech commands? How well will OpenOffice integrate with your current applications? o Will your current documents open and run in OpenOffice? Try it and see if tables, fields and graphics actually show up where they're supposed to be located. o Will your Microsoft Office users be able to reliably share documents with OpenOffice users? o Will the complex engineering and financial functions built with Microsoft Office work on OpenOffice? o When opening Microsoft Office documents in OpenOffice will the formatting be same? o Do you current applications that use SQL as a back end work with OpenOffice Base? o Does OpenOffice support the concept of presence which is found in Microsoft Office 2007 products? Do your printers support OpenOffice? o Do your printers have drivers for OpenOffice? o Does your current label printing software support OpenOffice? o Does print preview work in OpenOffice? o Do OpenOffice documents print as they appear on your screen? Do your current development tools and programmers support OpenOffice? o Who will you call if you want customization? o Does it have "Integration with Servers" allowing server developers to define custom workflows for data and content, create document-handling processes, help users collaborate through portals and workspaces with custom reports, views, and tools, and connect users to information in any business system in an enterprise? o Does it have over 1000 partners who provide custom solutions that range from broad, horizontal solutions covering deployment, manageability, portal integration and others; Vertical integration for legal, finance, manufacturing, health care, etc.? How secure is OpenOffice? o When a security risk is found in OpenOffice who fixes it? o Who pushes patches to fix security or bugs as they're found? o Does it have rights management services?