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IBM Stresses Importance of OpenDoc to MA
gordoste writes "After announcing this past weekend that the WorkPlace line of products would support the OpenDocument set of standards, IBM has sent a letter to Massachusetts' governor promoting the software. They point out that the software was built in Massachusetts and that the French tax agency saves 10% on their IT budget as a result of moving to open standard software." From the article: "Designed at IBM's development lab in Westford, Massachusetts, the IBM Workplace Managed Client will help protect an organization's investment in corporate data by promoting consistency, reliability and open accessibility of its documents. As you know, Massachusetts is recognized across the globe as an incubator for software development ... What you may not know is that software is major growth engine for IBM, and solutions being developed at these IBM locations are being built on open standards because our customers are demanding choice and control over their information technology."
so, first adopt it, then try to sell it w/ letter to governor. Interesting stuff...
From the letter to Governor Romney:
I'd like to share some information on an exciting new IBM product that was built in Massachusetts but is expected to have implications on both a national and international level.
It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting - YGMMV.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Of course it's important! to IBM. They are using the standard, and they want a government to support it, which will be, in turn, supporting the use of IBM products because they use the standard.
The title's reference to OpenDoc threw me. OpenDoc was an early component architecture developed and then abandoned by Apple in the 90s. Ahh, the days of CyberDog...
As a result of running software based on open standards, the agency is now saving around 20m per year a considerable portion of the agency's 200m yearly IT budget.
.. but you have to be aware that it's rarely a case of "switch and save". There are other related costs that need to be considered with a large changeover to a different document standard. Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software. Then there's the cost of developing a solution (doubtless IBM has one to sell) to allow access to archived materials at the same time as accessing the new format. Then there's the cost in staff turnover. Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave .. they need to keep their skills current just as much as the resident IT geeks .. and in the secretarial world 'current' = latest version of Office.
I advocate and use open standards whereever possible
While it's nice to say "these guys saved 20 million Euros" I wouldn't take that figure as red. They might have saved 20m euros on Microsoft licences (yay!), but what did the change cost elsewhere? Was that 20m euros really an overall saving?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
The non-commercial and public angle is made well enough already by the people who are in a position to make such arguments. IBM is a commercial software vendor and they wouldn't fool anybody into thinking otherwise if they tried.
Overall, I think it's a good thing that big vendors are advertising their products by stressing the value of open document formats to potential buyers because it shows that the formats are commercially supported and that businesses have an interested to continue to support them. The more commercial sales pitches MA gets for products using open document formats, the easier it will be for them to adopt such formats.
I know he seems to have fallen out of favor a bit since the .boom but ESR's Magic Cauldron is still a compelling piece of writing.
I think IBM is trying to build a cauldron.
Shh.
the IBM Workplace Managed Client will help protect an organization's investment in corporate data by promoting consistency, reliability and open accessibility of its documents.
The document format addresses part of the investment, namely the content assetts.
Also consider publishing workflows that occurs downstream from the document i.e. web publishing and print publishing.
Savvy corporations can also effectively leverage open standards such as the W3C's HTML, SVG, CSS and interaction workflows such as those enabled by WHATWG and.or X-Forms to achieve stellar ROI across the publishing lifecycle.
Irony: IBM stressing the importance of open standards. (If this were 1985)
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Great. First IBM was a gigantic software company advising Massachusets (relatively) objectively. Now they're just another software maker trying to push their product. This is actually going to nudge Massachusets closer to Microsoft again.
IBM vs. Microsoft: The new battle.
Coming soon to your local theater.
(Steve Ballmer: Except in Massachusetts!)
Regardless, they are fully supporting an open standard. This puts all software on a level playing field. Alternative browsers have gained great amounts of market share recently because they all compete on a (theoretically) level playing field (in practice we all know MS has attempted their own extensions to try and make html not so open standard). So what if IBM promotes their software product. The fact it will fully support open document is good enough. I think all open source advocates want is a level playing field not hindered by market leaders forcing vendor lock-in. We just want an environment where the software speaks for itself.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
The two seem to go hand-in-hand.
Now if IBM can just write a program to fully document how and where the money was spent on the Big Dig.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that "I'm going to f***ing burry IBM, too!"
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
The MA people were assuming there was going to be re-training costs regardless of what product they migrated to, so whether it's Office 12 or OO.org is irrelevant. They also made the argument that going to ODF would also save on the hard cost of having to upgrade thousands of PCs to something capable of running Office 12.
MA did their homework, and I'm assuming similar arguments pertain in the French case as well.
Not least there's the cost of re/training staff to use new software.
.. they need to keep their skills current just as much as the resident IT geeks .. and in the secretarial world 'current' = latest version of Office.
1. This is true for every major upgrade of MS-Office, as well. It is not unique to switching to a "different" document editing suite.
Iif you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave
See point 1. You just contradicted the whole "training/retraining" point you made earlier. And this is one of the most ludicrous statements I've heard in defence of MS-Office. Granted, I haven't worked in an office dedicated to creating documents since my university-worker days, but I've never met an office worker who would quit their job over MS-Office. Even those that insisted on WordPerfect (back when it was king, and MS-Office was the also-ran) made the transition to another office suite just fine.
While it's nice to say "these guys saved 20 million Euros" I wouldn't take that figure as red. They might have saved 20m euros on Microsoft licences (yay!), but what did the change cost elsewhere? Was that 20m euros really an overall saving?
This is an excellent point.
I think it will be worth it, just because they *are* moving to an open standard. It might cost a little bit up front, but over the next decade, it will save a tremendous amount of money. Hell, just being able to put the office suite licensing out to bid (which you sure as hell can't do if you use MS-Office document formats) should provide a bit of competition, which is good for the citizen or organization spending their hard-earned cash.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Nice to see a company breaking out of the quarter-to-quarter mind set and building a long term strategy for their success. And, oh yeah, a lot of us will also benefit from the sea change.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Actually, I didn't know that. Since when? When I think "software development incubators", I think California, New York, and... *sigh* India.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
IBM's being persuasive in an indirect manner. (but affectively)
1 61942401/
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051205
Outside of the killer work that groklaw has been doing, the open source crowd seems to missing in action once again on an issue that is of vital importance to the software world.
Too busy get involved and write a letter or make a phone call because you were:
* Tweaking your kewl Matrix desktop theme?
* Finding some open source project to start a duplicate project of?
* Too busy playing Windows games?
* Trying to get your with your latest ?
* Posting countless +5 Insightful posts about the 'power of open source' or some other drivel?
* Working on your digg.com rep?
meant to read as: spam
meant to say: governor won't read that
meant to convey: would you read a letter that starts with:
?
The overall idea in getting away from MS is not to save money immediatly, but save money in the long run. MS has historically shown us they want to lock you in as fiercly as possible. Staying with MS now just means it will be harder to get away from them in 5 or 10 years. Once they are on a system of open document, they can really switch office suites that support it however they want. They can do testing of new suites within single departments and still exchange documents with everyone else. It isn't so much saving money directly on MS licenses. It's having the choice to go to another vendor at any time and not having to do a massive migration (such as what would happen with getting away from MS in the first place).
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
The wikipedia article that you linked to is excellent. The links to other parts of wikipedia are acually relevant to the article, which is a nice change.
"I'd like to share some information on an exciting new IBM product that was built in Massachusetts but is expected to have implications on both a national and international level."
It would have been nice to make the point without making the letter seem like a cold-call sales pitch. I found the first paragraph a bit off-putting - YGMMV.
To be honest attitudes like that are part of what holds the adoption of open source back. There is nothing wrong with that attitude, I share it - I am put off too, but OSS needs to get past that "by geeks for geeks" attitude *if* it wants to dominate.
It *is* a cold-call sales pitch. You can't hide that fact. IBM shows the honesty and integrity not to try to camoflauge things, this maintains their credibility. Secondly IBM has quite a bit of experience pitching products to large organizations and government agencies. I think we should defer to IBM's judgement in this case. Finally, I find the Massachusetts reference brilliant and an example of why we should defer to IBM. They are pitching to a politician. They just gave him the choice to either (1) Embrace local industry and help it compete on a global scale, creating local jobs and tax revenue or (2) give his next political opponent a stick to beat him with during an election for failing to do so, politics is local. Insights like this are how products and technologies are "sold", not via MS/OSS cost benefit analysis. The political will often trump the technical. Is this desirable? No, but it is how things work and OSS geeks need to face this reality. The professional sales and marketing people at IBM, Red Hat, etc do understand this.
If you're not using MS Office you may find a lot of your secretarial staff are keen to leave
And the above seems rather preposterous.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Gov. Romney won't buy it... Mormons don't believe in open source.
Here's my witty comment about a signature. Ha. Ha.
As you know, Massachusetts is recognized across the globe
Someone remind me; where exactly is Massa Chusette these days?
Is he in Winconcin?
Someone say he down dat Ole Man Ribber.
They are going to save now, and in 2 years, and again 2 year after that.
The conversion costs are a one-time event.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Matz, the creator of Ruby, is a Mormon.
Wait, so open formats are good, but large corporate entities marketing products that support them are bad?
Personally, I think this is one of the most honest and noble marketing pathways a company can take. I've always believed in maintaining my customer base on merit, not on locking someone in by hiding information that they would need to take their business elsewhere. By promoting an open format, IBM is saying to the customer, "We're comfortable that we can provide the best service at the best price. So much so that we're building our business with an open door to go elsewhere." That's confident and reassuring.
I'd much rather receive that type of marketing than a, "Hey, look at all the pretty features, just give up your freedom and we'll take care of you... really," approach.
Sure we do.
The same French that are coming down hard on Open source P2P are using other open source projects to save %10 in their tax department, nice way to give back to the movement guys.
James Shoemaker
To be honest attitudes like that are part of what holds the adoption of open source back. There is nothing wrong with that attitude, I share it - I am put off too, but OSS needs to get past that "by geeks for geeks" attitude *if* it wants to dominate.
My statement had nothing to do with OSS zealotry or any sort of "geeks for geeks" agenda. OSS is a nice idea, but I care more about whether the product/app/etc works and does what I need it to do. I won't use (or encourage others to use) ill-fitting products just because they are OSS.
If someone wants to inform me or to change my mind about something, he is better off just presenting the facts and showing - in a reasonably objective fashion - why A is better than B. This is not geeky; this is pragmatic. I also said Y[G]MMV, which should be a clear indication that I do not expect everyone to hold the same view.
The letter's author could have mentioned "an opportunity to collaborate" or similar in the first paragraph; this would have conveyed the desired point without mentioning an "exciting new IBM product". As was mentioned elsewhere, IBM is a commercial entity; the reader will likely interpret the opener as "IBM wants to sell me something" (where sell==exchange_money_for_goods_and_services).
Note also that I didn't have a problem with the rest of the letter.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
This is an excellent point. Office 12 has a completely redesigned UI with a whole new "ribbon" concept. OpenOffice.org probably requires *less* retraining than Microsoft office. It is deliberately similar to the latest versions of MS Office. Throw in the fact that most of the new functionality of MS Office is tied to Microsoft's new server software and now is basically the perfect time to look at an alternative office suite and IBM's alternative office software.
I wonder who these guys are who IBM pays, wait... PAY$ to sell a conceptual framework for OpenDoc support that they have not even adopted yet! I would love to be paid to bullshit! That is like the best job. Bullshitters get the best jobs... just look at GWB.
ZDNet UK has published a long and insightful article about the French Tax Agency move to Linux. Don't be fooled by the article subtitle, this is not so much about OpenOffice.org cost than about the whole excellent open-source strategy at work at the DGI.
French opt for laissez-faire Linux
Note that I am a contractor for the DGI, and can vouch for the accuracy of the article. Of course, not everything's perfect (schedules, budget, etc.), but for the most part, for a project of this magnitude, this is currently a big success. Definitely a very important reference for the open-source movement.
arg, damn, ibm, ibm, ibm...
in the ibm workplace portfolio only lotus domino is good, though the lotus notes client is butt ugly and a bit buggy.
lotus workplace collaboration services and services express on the other hand _are_ _nothing_ _but_ _bugs_ _and_ _bad_ _design_, built on complete crap, namely websphere application server and portal.
having done numerous lwp installations i'm speeking from experience, stay away from it.
i laugh every time i see something about lwp, people have no clue, it really is at least 10 years away from being stable; so don't buy it!
No, I think he meant morons.
Over the years, I have switched my document files from .doc -> .rtf -> .sxw -> .odt.
.sxw (the initial draft of OpenDocument when Sun submitted it for standardization) and .odt are fully documented XML, but what happens in one or more centuries when you just have a .odt file, but the spec was lost to history? Do you have to reverse engineer it from the XML? That should be better than a binary format, but I wonder just how much it will help...
What happens when a new version of OpenDocument comes out? Do we have to convert again? Will it be like the Word 95 and 97/2k/xp formats that use the same extension, but different formats?
Yes
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Bill gates reading the news over the internet while he eats supper. Suddenly his eyes lock on a story about IBM. He begins to choke on his steakbone...
OpenDoc... doesn't that have to do with Copland or Rhapsody or Pink or Taligent or something?
Like anyone can even know that
sack that, what about the far future where you have to reverse engineer ASCII to even get as far as XML!
Anyway, if Massachusetts (or anybody else for that matter) decides instead to wait for MS Office 12 (if/when it is ready) to use MOOX format (if/when it is ready) then you still have the retraining costs. If anything they may even be higher than when switching from current versions of MS Office to OpenOffice.org.
and Both quotes from Be prepared for Office 12 last month. And that's all just from the perspective of features the user is already familiar with. There has been no discussion (news blackout?) of the server ties and digital restriction management (DRM) issues that are part of MS Office 12. You get all the standard migration problems plus new functionallity, plus new interfaces, plus dependence on connectivity, plus dependence on server based responses. Not a recipe for a smooth transition. Going over to OpenOffice.org could even be cheaper and easier. Things change. Eventually, maybe sooner maybe later, MS Office will go away just as WordPerfect faded and before that WordStar faded. However, most secretarial staff probably don't care what word processor they use as long as it works. The new MS formats are not gaining significant market share and that's what MS has historically used to drive new sales of MS Office. So it is possible that a universal format like OpenDocument could take over. In that case, those same secretaries will be fluffing their resumes with mention of OpenOffice or some other OpenDocument compliant tool.Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
the old Apple technology? YAAAAY! Cyberdog is making a comeback!
Almost like EBCIDIC today... ;)
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.