Here is one example of choices I’d like the city to consider. The City may have needs which cannot be met by Google’s offering, but I hope to investigate this in the next few weeks.
Commentary from CNET: Google’s low-cost alternative to Microsoft Office
By Forrester Research, Special to CNET News.com, February 22, 2007, 11:56AM PT, By Erica Driver, Matt Brown and Kyle McNabb
Google’s latest foray into making affordable messaging, collaboration and office productivity tools targets business people worldwide and takes dead aim at Microsoft Office. For only $50 per user per year, Google Apps Premier Edition, unveiled on Thursday, lets companies register domains and access e-mail, calendars, chat, documents and spreadsheets with no installed servers or software or people to maintain them. Read the whole CNET article.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackAnother alternative to Microsoft Office is the open source software, OpenOffice.org. This includes a very powerful word processor, spreadsheet, drawing and presentation package. A simple data base is also included. I have used it for several years.
A major difference between OOo and the google software is that OOo resides on your computer and does not require a active internet connection.
The Internet connection required by Google offers an infinite variety of collabration opportunities. It is also a fair assumption that city staff would be connected 99.9% of the time.
I agree Google Apps has greater potential for collaboration but this strength comes at what I consider a weakness of doing everything on the net. Would the City Attorney’s Office want all of their legal drafting done over the web? Also, OOo is the more powerful package.
Perhaps it is best to consider them complimentary. Use Google Apps for the calender and when sharing is most important, OOo for more complex tasks and greater security. Google Apps states it will accept native OOo files.
At $50/person/year Google Apps would still cost $40,000 unless there is a large site discount. What does the city pay for Microsoft Office?
A final comment for those that might be considering either for another use, OOo is free (unless you wish to make a donation) Google Apps Basic is also still free for personal use.
Wordperfect is another free office suite, or maybe it’s only a word processor.
I certainly concur that An Arbor could reduce its IT cost by using open source software.
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