Comment Re:Ignores cost of switching to other products. (Score 1) 324
Don't fool yourself. Upgrading MS's own products can be just as much of a hassle as any platform migration. Less even, if you consider being able to fix your own issues a valuable time saver.
In order to move to Office 2003/Server 2003 Combination - it will require some amount of conversion of your existing documents. As does switching to StarOffice/OpenOffice. Complex documents are going to have conversion issues just as they would in OpenOffice, though maybe to a lesser degree because MS understand their document format better. Well, maybe not.
This 2003 platform is not going to magically figure out how to route documents or set rights management. The real question for businesses is whether they want to commit to the new 2003 integrated office platform to build new applications and workflow with - because that is where any platform advantage would be seen. Businesses must weight the risks of investing time/money and data into this new MS scheme and the potential that MS could extort more dollars from them in the future (no - they'd never do that - right?).
I see this coming down to 2 camps of thought - those that like the MS integrated environment (and always have). They believe that MS deserves the money it earns and are glad to hand over their hard earned dollars every year. The other are businesses that have been burned by MS in the past, are sceptical of their business tactics, or don't see the need for this highly integrated Office Platform. The first camp will choose MS regardless, so it's futile even persuing them. The second camp would be good candidates for non-MS products (and may already be using them in the form of Lotus or Corel products). The real trick is making sure they know that there are alternatives to MS's Office 2003 platform - before they are shoehorned into it by MS resellers/partners.
In order to move to Office 2003/Server 2003 Combination - it will require some amount of conversion of your existing documents. As does switching to StarOffice/OpenOffice. Complex documents are going to have conversion issues just as they would in OpenOffice, though maybe to a lesser degree because MS understand their document format better. Well, maybe not.
This 2003 platform is not going to magically figure out how to route documents or set rights management. The real question for businesses is whether they want to commit to the new 2003 integrated office platform to build new applications and workflow with - because that is where any platform advantage would be seen. Businesses must weight the risks of investing time/money and data into this new MS scheme and the potential that MS could extort more dollars from them in the future (no - they'd never do that - right?).
I see this coming down to 2 camps of thought - those that like the MS integrated environment (and always have). They believe that MS deserves the money it earns and are glad to hand over their hard earned dollars every year. The other are businesses that have been burned by MS in the past, are sceptical of their business tactics, or don't see the need for this highly integrated Office Platform. The first camp will choose MS regardless, so it's futile even persuing them. The second camp would be good candidates for non-MS products (and may already be using them in the form of Lotus or Corel products). The real trick is making sure they know that there are alternatives to MS's Office 2003 platform - before they are shoehorned into it by MS resellers/partners.
