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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."
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.
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?
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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.
Irony: IBM stressing the importance of open standards. (If this were 1985)
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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.
*stands up* (bullshit) BINGO!
On a serious note, you're right to point this out. We need to take our language back from these baffoons who seems to speak alot but don't really say anything.
Simon
Actually, I think that's an excellent first line. It's telling those making the decision that supporting Open Document is likely to have a positive impact on the state's economy (i.e. people are currently employed writing software that uses the standard). That means that suddenly one of the options involves more money flowing in-state - a solution that makes a lot of politicians happy.
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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.
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.
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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
As opposed to Microsoft, who, in their correspondence, makes no mention that going with OpenDocument will cost them big money in lost sales?
I'd much rather a company say "We support X and here is our product that does so" then "You shouldn't go with X for FUD reasons a, b, and c. (And, while we won't tell you this, if you go with X, it will cost us $x million in annual sales)". Give credit to the company with the blatant agenda as opposed to the not-so-well hidden one.
- Tony
Yeah. These implementations speak:
XForms in Mozilla (with SVG integration)
WHATWG demos
And Jacques Surveyor speaks.
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.
I think a "we do business in your state and we are basing some of that business on ODF" message might be EXACTLY what Romney needs to hear. He's clearly business friendly.
Besides most polititians automatically assume that *everybody* has alterior motives when they do something good.
These posts (like the parent) are karma whoring... everyone already knows that OpenDoc is dead and that some people say OpenDoc as a shorthand of OpenDocument.
Every single article which makes this mistake gets a whole book of this kind of posts. Enough already. Thank you.
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The IBM exec was just making a very important political point. While Microsoft is a big company with a lot of political influence, IBM is also a big company with lots of political influence (and a lot more experience wielding that influence). IBM also has something that Microsoft does not have, and that is a significant investment in the state of Massachusetts.