Questions To Consider
What You Should Think About Before Installing LibreOffice & OpenOffice in the Enterprise
City Estimates 27 percent cost
savings for Microsoft vs. Mixed
Environment with OpenOffice.
City of Reykjavik, Iceland
“A hugely disproportionate 30
percent of our IT resources was
required for a period of months to
service Open Source to the
detriment of other users. Beyond
this, an estimated 25 percent of
additional staff time was routinely
required to install and maintain
Open Source-based systems.” David
Stirling, ICT Manager, Central
Scotland Police
“I consider myself a power user of
Microsoft Office, but I spent several
hours a week for a month looking
through online forums and blogs to
get proficient with OpenOffice.org”
Ria Xenja, Educator, Orange County
Public Schools
Who supports LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org?

What is the phone number to call when a
mission critical application breaks?

What is the support model?

Who fixes bugs when they are found?

Who do you escalate an issue with when you
need help?

Who adds features when technology warrants a
change?

Who delivers training?
Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide
features that make it ready for the mobile
world?

How are LibreOffice / OpenOffice file
formats going to work with the growing
number of mobile devices that enterprise IT
managers are being forced to manage?

Do they have a mobile edition like
Microsoft Office Mobile?

Do they have integration issues between
documents created in the mobile base
platform vs the PC base platform?
How secure is LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org?

When a security risk is found in LibreOffice who
fixes it?

Who pushes patches to fix security or bugs as
they're found?

Does it have rights management services?

Where is the roadmap for LibreOffice /
OpenOffice.org?

How many developers work on the project?

How fast will the security issues encountered
be addressed? How long will it take before
users are informed?
Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide
Cloud or Online services?

What if you have users that need a
productivity solution in the cloud?

What if you need a hybrid solution?

Can you get the same productivity interface
in the cloud?

Can you be sure when an issuea rises that it
will get fixed in time?
Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide
management features ?

If the installation fails, do they enable rollback?

Do they have the feature to alert the user if
there are any current update or security
patches that could raise a red flag on the user
application? Does it support bug fix as patches
or a complete reinstall?

Doe they 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?

Do they have a well documented online
resources that offer step-by-step guides,
scenarios and roadmaps to help deploy the
office suite?

Do they support "Administrative Installation
Points" where the source installation files are
stored in a dedicated place on the network?

Do they have "Save My Settings Wizard" which
enables users to save their settings directly to a
file or up to the Web where they can easily
access and apply them to another machine so
that users no longer have to recreate their
settings on a second machine (such as a
machine at home) or a new machine?

Do they have an environment assessment tool
to understand potential risks before installing?
Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org support
collaboration?

Does it have peer to peer collaboration?

Does it have offline collaboration (e.g. email, document sharing) that can be synced
once online?

Does it support online collaboration?

Will it support simultaneous remote coauthoring? (in every app? There’s is only
calc)

Does it support contextual collaboration?
Does LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org provide
rich features and friendly usability ?

How important is it for your presentations
and reports to be appealing?

How much work does it take to correct the
graphics on imported documents?

Does it support tablet hand writing?

Does it support speech commands?

Does it have accessibility features such as
integration with screen readers and
magnifiers?

Does LibreOffice offer note taking
capabilities like OneNote in Microsoft
Office 2013 across PC, phone and browser?

Does it provide accessbility and support for
handicapped people?
Questions To Consider
What You Should Think About Before Installing LibreOffice & OpenOffice in the Enterprise
Microsoft Office 2010 boosts Indian
IT firm’s productivity by 30 percent.
Srinivasa Rao, Managing Director,
NecX
“With Microsoft Office Professional
2010, not only were our needs for
secure collaboration met, we also
knew that we would have the
support we need to address any
issues. The integration of the suite,
the updates and the security made it
so simple to get answers from a
knowledge base that is impeccable.”
John Perkins, Founder and Owner,
Defence Firm, Basic Black, LLC
“There are fewer features in
OpenOffice.org compared to
Microsoft Office. It doesn’t have
programs functionally equivalent to
Visio, it doesn’t have Project, it
doesn’t have Outlook and it doesn’t
have OneNote. This is a significant
loss for the end-user, who loses
efficiency in his or her day-to-day
routine. For us, this loss represents a
significant cost, since it means that
we must have more employees to do
the same tasks.” Jorge Ferreira, IT
Director, Nanium
For more information on Why Microsoft
Office vs. Open Office.org,
http://www.whymicrosoft.com/openoffice
For more information on Microsoft,
www.microsoft.com
For Microsoft case studies,
www.microsoft.com/casestudies
This document is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
How well will LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org
interoperate with your current applications?

Does LibreOffice provide BI Integration like in
Microsoft Office 2013?

Will all of your current documents or MS Office
Files open and run in LibreOffice?

Try it and see if tables, fields and graphics
actually show up where they're supposed to be
located.

Will your Microsoft Office users be able to
reliably share documents with LibreOffice
users? Does it sacrifice performance and/or
security?

Will the complex engineering and financial
functions built with Microsoft Office work on
LibreOffice?

When opening Microsoft Office documents in
LibreOffice will there be formatting issues?

Does LibreOffice support the concept of
presence which is found in Microsoft Office
2013 products (with Microsoft Lync)?

Does copying and pasting across applications
causes any issue? Crashes? Or Data/Formatting
issues?

ODF and file format: What is LibreOffice’s
roadmap for file format and ISO standards?
Do your current development tools and
programmers support LibreOffice /
OpenOffice.org?

Who will you call if you want
customization?

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?

Does it have over 1000 partners who
provide custom solutions that range from
broad, horizontal solutions covering
deployment, manageability, portal
integration and others, and vertical
integration for legal, finance, health care,
etc.?