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Open Source-Friendly Smartphones For the Small Office?
Thunderstruck writes "I work in a small office with just two computers. Both machines run long-term-service releases of Ubuntu, with Gnome, and Evolution for scheduling, contact management and electronic mail. We plan to stick with Linux long-term. For telephone service, we're using smartphones. In order to keep everything straight, we need phones that can synchronize easily with the calendars and contact data on each owner's desktop machine. We cannot use cloud based services for this function due to ethics rules, and for security reasons. Right now, we do all of this with older Palm phones, but these are a dying breed. What options are out there right now for phones that will sync with Evolution (or another good Linux PIM suite) which do not require data to go through the cloud first?"
Android
The short answer is "there ain't none". You may be able to hack together an in house solution with some N900 devices, but they will probably be discontinued next year. After that who knows. As for the rest, all require using proprietary sync tools (ala iTunes) or syncing to remote servers (Driod, PalmPre, Blackberry).
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
Consider, though, the following.
Android, in its current state, can talk to an Exchange server. If you have an option that will do this (Evo server, maybe?), use it.
Blackberry and Windows Mobile are both syncable on Linux in general. Do searches in the Ubuntu package manager.
Nokia Symbian, I believe, will function similarly.
This sig no verb.
Many phones can sync emails via IMAP (like your own mail server, which I think doesn't count as "could"). If you also need calendar/contacts, then I think you're out of luck.
Google is your friend
Multisync
Look what's supported.
Take your pick.
You're welcome.
Even some gifts come with a price. Try not to imagine Goatse. Ha Ha. Got you.
http://syncevolution.org/ Looks fairly promising using your current setup. A brief look give the assumption it's compatible with evolution, and will connect up to anything that talks syncml, and there's a syncml client for nearly any smartphone out there. And some dated info found at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=398113 gives info on someone setting up evolution to talk activesync, which would allow for windows-based phones to sync up...
I sync Evolution with a Samsung Epix running Windows Mobile 6.5. Works fine, at least with the USB cable - I haven't tried Bluetooth.
I'm running Debian Squeeze.
--saint
The only thing that I've seen like this is the Meego based phones. Of course, it's all still alpha.
It's basically a Debian box with phone functionality.
Add blue tooth keyboard & mouse, plug the video out into a decent monitor and I'm not even sure you need a desktop or laptop.
Deleted
I recently bought an E-63 and it will sync with Evo. Great little phone, and I do not have to diddle with it. It just works.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
I recommend using Zimbra. It's free, is an excellent mail server similar in functionality to Exchange, and will easily install on either Debian 5.0 or any version of Ubuntu. You can use any mail client, and they even have their own client, as well as a feature-rich ajax-based web client. I sync it to my Android phone via MAPI, and it works very seamlessly.
I've never used it, but if you set up a zimbra server, then you can use the connectors available for the 'droids. That should give you the services you need on a box that you control.
- doug
If you're already using debian-based products, why not use Maemo for the phones and apt-get debian-ARM .debs? Even if regular syncing doesn't work, you could automate an rsync over SSH with passwordless pke.
Get a small (hosted or not) server to sync your desktop and all kinds of other mobile devices against. There are free and open source packages for Calendaring, E-mail (obviously) and Contacts either separately or together. If you already have a server, which you most likely do have, it will be able to handle this little bit of extra web service. This way you'll also be better protected in case a client computer decides to crash.
Otherwise, Ubuntu One and other service can get you these services for a small price.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I'm not a fan of the cloud but I've never considered it unethical. Care to elaborate?
Most of the mobile world I know of is slowly moving away from direct synchronisation with the desktop. Instead, the desktop and the mobile device sync with the mail/groupware server.
I suggest taking a look at Zimbra as it supports most devices out there. You can go at it both ways too, with either a server sync or a desktop sync.
We are using Exchange right now with the Evolution MAPI conduit. We are moving away from this solution in favor of Zimbra which will work across desktop and mobile platforms.
Some Exchange alternatives may work with ActiveSync. This opens up your options to Palm Pre, Android, and iPhone. They may also work with Blackberry Enterprise Server. (Novell may have a solution that runs on Linux.)
It has been a while since I've looked for these kinds of solutions. The one thing that has likely not changed, however, is the fact you'll have to pay for the connections between your computer/server and the phones.
Email is going to be the easiest solution. Calendaring will be the hardest.
You say you cannot use the cloud -- but can you use off-site management for anything? If so, use a hosted Exchange server or something of that kind.
If you are hosting everything yourself, then over the air syncing with your calendar may be accomplished with some WebDav solutions. I think Palm/HP's WebOS does CalDav; perhaps the iPhone and Android as well.
Finally, contacts are going to also be difficult. An Exchange replacement will work best for that as well.
Good luck!
You know what?
I still haven't found an app that can sync contacts and SMS between Symbian, Windows Mobile and/or the Sony Ericsson standard platform. A bit less that 10 years ago I could do all that on PalmOS - the app was called GSMtool - and Ericsson/Siemens phones through IR.
Something that you could try is making your own cloud. Try a VM with Funambol, some say it does work. Haven't tried it myself.
If you can set up your own SyncML server, then there are clients for pretty much all the major phone platforms.
Google is of course your friend. You could start by looking at stuff like Synthesis AG, SyncEvolution and Funambol.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Isn't there a new Palm version about to be released? I believe it uses WebOS.
As pointed out by Harald Welte (he's as good an authority on the subject as any), the Samsung Galaxy S is a good candidate. Samsung makes all of its source open and there probably isn't firmware locking, AFAIK.
Instead of trusting your data to someone else's cloud, you could always run your own server on something like Zarafa...
I have a Zarafa setup to which i have an iphone and a nexus one synced, all the data travels over SSL. I actually find this a lot more useful than having to connect my phone over usb every day.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Why not use the Palm Pre? It's similar in design to the new Blackberry Torch (slide out physical keyboard) and WebOS is great.
Blackberry
Synch to Evolution using "multisync". I also use "googlesync" on the blackberry, so my assistant can schedule me by editing web interface (or, calendaring events via email -- but the web schedule turns out to be remarkably useful for me). But, I am based on an older Fedora -- there have been improvements in the past 2 years.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
It's the most open source friendly phone right now. Meego might become that when it's available in a big way.
You can ssh into it and sync without using any cloud services. No "jailbeaking" is necessary; you have root out of the box.
The phone is yours. Not Apple's or Motorola's or even Nokia's.
You should ask yourself during this trial on how many more business-specific applications you're going to have to dig around for and come up with hobbled-together solutions when you could have very well done this easily with Windows SBS/Exchange and been done with it. In fact, you'd be already most of the way finished doing this if you just used SBS.
Your boss can focus more time on actually conducting business and less time trying to come up with "OSS" ways to do it.
Remember, IT works for business--not the other way around. Sometimes you need to make concessions on this.
The Nokia N900 really does just run a desktop Linux stack. From that perspective you can do whatever you want with it pretty easily. Things like SyncEvolution work on the N900. That said, Nokia's Maemo is in the process of being merged with Intel's Moblin into MeeGo. It may be worth waiting to see what Nokia's first MeeGo phone is like and perhaps getting that in preference to the N900.
So long as you have encrypted connections, what's wrong with using 'the cloud'? I don't think you'll find any modern phone that syncs email with a desktop email client anymore. Why the heck would that be desirable anyway?
Also, I'd like to put in a plug for the HP Pre. The contacts and email applications on WebOS are better than what I've seen on Android or iPhone. You can have tons of calendars and even multiple Exchange accounts on the same phone.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
They'll fix that with the next update.
Actually, you're right. It's called Windows Phone 7, and it's not looking too Linux friendly.
They did need to improve the Windows Mobile UI quite a bit, but I think they're throwing the baby out with the bath water...
I don't sync devices with USB to my computer anymore that was last decade. When you say on the cloud what do you mean? You do realize your email travels across the internet unencrypted and is readable by anyone in the path unless you have taken measures to encrypt every email right? The future is sending data directly to the device over the Internet or VPN if your so inclined just as you would your desktop. So setup a mail server and have your device connect to the mail server via imap or POP3 and ical... over VPN if you prefer.
Plugging in a device to your desktop to sync is silly and archaic at this point. If you want a file off of your desktop buy a phone with ssh sftp client and ssh sftp the file just as you would from your desktop. It's past time to think of your phone as a little computer with much the same capabilities as your big computer because that's what it is now. Apps you get from whatever app store music and content the same all done wirelessly there's really no need to plug in except for power.
If you have ethics and security issues with storing data in the cloud, then shouldn't you also be looking for a device or application that encrypts sensitive data?
Do any Android phones do encryption natively? I've heard that the upcoming Droid Pro claims to. I know the iPhone has encryption support, but I don't know how whether it encrypts all application data or only data that Apple deems 'sensitive'.
I use SyncEvolution with my Nokia E71. Works flawlessly. Will also work with the Nokia N900 and I'm guessing any Symbian S60 phone. http://syncevolution.org/
If you don't want to go cloud you will either have to set up your own server or directly sync between the desktops and the phones. Since you are already set on Evolution you will have to find a solution that works with Evolution. I have done a lot of research into syncing for myself and for my job. For Evolution there is a mature solution called SyncEvolution that even has corporate sponsors. SyncEvolution speaks SyncML, so you simply have to find either phones or a server that speaks SyncML.
For servers: http://www.synthesis.ch/ or http://www.egroupware.org/
Certain phones can speak syncml. For example the Nokia E-Series (business phones). Also said company Synthesis does offer an Android app to add SyncML capability to Android phones.
If your calendaring solution supports publishing via CalDAV or Exchange ActiveSync, then the iPhone will sync over-the-air for both of these systems.
I have a number of clients running Kerio Connect (not Open Source, but runs on Linux if you're interested) that's essentially a drop-in replacement for Exchange and it supports ActiveSync. iPhones sync to this for mail, calendar and contacts very well. As do most other smartphones that aren't a BlackBerry.
If you don't like the idea of using ActiveSync, you can configure mail via IMAP and calendar via CalDAV and it also works very well.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Life will be a lot easier for you if you run a calendar server that supports an open standard, such as CalDAV.
Don't bother syncing the phone with the desktop computer, sync the desktop computer and the phone with your calendar server.
Things will work a lot better that way, you can share your calendars with each other and you've got a single point to backup for all calendar information.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
I've been really happy with this approach, personally. I run eGroupware on my server, and it in turn provides device-agnostic GroupDAV and SyncML services (among others) that I use to keep my smartphone (an iPhone 3G, but options exist for pretty much everything else too) synchronized. I don't use Evolution, but I understand that it is supported as a client (I use Thunderbird / Lightning, although there's currently a bug in one or both of them causing problems that I haven't tracked down).
On top of integrating well with my phone, desktop, and laptop, it also provides a decent web interface for it all that I can use when none of them are available. It doesn't provide its own mail server, but it integrates just fine with what I had already set up - and all communication (send/receive mail, synchronize, and web applications) is inside an SSL tunnel. The functionality I have, for personal information, is as good or better than every corporate Exchange system I've interacted with. And it's all open source, except for the pieces that run on my proprietary phone.
--Matthew
that's not an office, that's a closet ...
My blog
It's a great password manager. Aside from dropbox, it's one of the first things I install on a new machine that will be used by me or a close relative.
On the broader note, though, almost all of these have equivalents or better on the iPhone platform.
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Most people that think of syncing really don't need that much and what you need is almost never confidential. For example you probably really just need your contacts and your schedule.
Unless you are a criminal, neither would be subject to questions of ethics - and unless you are a high ranking politician would not even rank as sensitive information. For those - go with the cloud. Evolution will sync your contacts to Google and google calendar is great - especially for small groups or individuals. Both are native on Android. For email - just setup your own server or use the hosted email you have now with the built in mail client. Turn on SSL (TLS) encryption and Bob's your uncle.
If you need to sync and carry documents / spreadsheets or the like, just use android and do an rsync with a directory on your sever or workstation. You can transfer files via bluetooth, USB or WiFi.
Coming from Palm it's a little weird getting used to cutting the cord but it really is great and does work.
"Smile, listen, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you wanted to do anyway." ~Robert Downey Jr.
You could just use a stock Android phone and it's built in VPN capability to talk to an in-house Exchange compatible server that is only available via VPN. Would resolve your "we can't do it in the cloud for security and ethics reasons" issue and keep your people mobile at the same time. There are many other sync capabilities available as mentioned by other posters, but the VPN approach would certainly make any of those solutions more useful and practical.
Meus subcriptio est nocens Latin quoniam bardus populus reputo is sanus callidus
For a long time Palm has worked incredibly well over the wire with Linux and Linux sync tools. I cannot speak about the latest and greatest of this. but if they use the same backend protocol then it should be the same. In a newer sense there have been no tools to do a over the wire sync with android yet. which is ironic as it is a Linux smartphone OS. However there are a number of over the air solutions that exist. one of which is actually provided by Ubuntu in the Ubuntu one service. this is based off of funambol's technology which works very much like RIM's technology. However some things allready exist. If you have a mailserver that is compatible with activesync then you can connect that way directly to your mailserver (i do not know off the top of my head about this) but in a simpler way you can get email and connect it via IMAP directly so email synchronization with email on the server is easy. contacts and appointments are now the harder issue. however if your company is willing to go that direction zimbra appears to work with windows mobile active sync, and may be an option for you. this it would seem is your best option to keep it all in house. http://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Mobile_Device_Setup the only other option is to find out how much data is on their servers with funambol
As a sysadmin, you first obligation is to your employer, not your principles.
Wrong, before being a sysadmin, one is a person, and as a person, the principles should be above what the employer demand. Of course, one of the basic principles is also not harm the company you work for :)
example: i would never send spam or do false advertising, even if that would help the company, but of course, i would not force OpenOffice.org to the accounting guy and all his (excel) scripted spreadsheet files. On the other hand, most of the people would be forced to use OpenOffice.org, because they don't really need MS Office, the same way i would not give a Ferrari, unless someone really needs it or the boss order it.
Higuita
Look at Axigen. It has an excellent FREE mail/calendar/contacts/todo server much like Exchange, and for very little money you can buy the module that syncs everything up with any Activesync compatible phone (iPhones, Windos Mobile, etc.)
From the things that I've seen and heard, the ability for iPhone's encryption to protect your data is somewhat nebulous, since there seem to be plenty of attacks on the access controls to the key.
iOS's claims to do encryption are based on the operating system/hardware to do the encryption for you and you trust that nobody can circumvent or duplicate the hardware. Data's not really safe unless you have encryption all the way to the application layer, so that the data's safe even if attacker has physical access the phone.
I have to admit to feeling slightly concerned over the amount of people recommending Zimbra, which have founded their business on Outlook integration with Linux. The submitter already has a neat Debian setup, so I don't really get why people would be pushing Microsoft lock-in onto them. If anything, we need to get away from that, and onto open standards. (IE5 + ASP anyone?)
Really, I must ask... What part of "the two computers use Evolution" did you not understand?
What part of "two computers" did you not understand?
Now, what phone are you recommending?
There was no complaint about services, costs, or anything remotely resembling a question about installing MS SBS.
But, since you brought it up -- a copy of MS SBS costs $1,089 (http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/pricing.aspx?pf=true) -- and something for taxes. And, of course, a computer to run it on, installation and training... call it $2000 (I'd go higher, but, hey, MS people are fairly inexpensive - normally, I'd figure $100/hour for installation and training, and a $600 + taxes for the server, $2000 combined, and a services budget of 10 hours so $3000 total. Feel free to quote less).
But wait! He still has to buy the smartphones! Doesn't save one single sou.
But wait! For this ABSOLUTELY RETARDED answer (because you didn't answer the question at all), you get a +5 moderation.
So there is more than one idiot involved.
Like I said in another post, I use a Blackberry (I get the one with the biggest keyboard), and I sync to Evolution with multisync.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
In this case, he can use whichever phones he wants. Since most phones integrate with Exchange (iPhone, Android devices)--it frees up his boss to buy whichever phone he damn feels necessary to purchase.
Keep in mind, the original requirements was that he not put anything into the cloud. Understandable, but there's a certain cost associated with not putting things into the cloud. Again, amost every flavor of smart phone supports IMAP/POP/Exchange e-mail relatively simply.
You're assuming that one pays retail pricing on the operating system. On a really superbly low-end HP Server, SBS 2008 is $750 additional cost. This includes 5 CALs.
Personally, for cost-reasons for such a small company I'd highly recommend putting things on G-Mail and calling it a day. Install MS Office when necessary, and that's that. You're right, it's completely not worth the cost--but I wager given the web technologies today, you're not going to build something that competes with Google for the most flexibility and small business pricing.
That said, he's going to have more of a hell of a time trying to get OSS solutions to work and he would spend on doing it with G-Mail or Microsoft products.
Guaranteed.
In fact, the shit integrates so well--that my iPhone hits google and my work's Exchange for Calendar events. In addition to being able to sync calendar events from my local Outlook.
Simply put: Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Many people smarter than you have already done the hard parts, and it's superbly dumb to try to do it any other way.
Unfortuntely, here in the U.S. [the N900] only works with one carrier, T-Mobile, whose coverage is a joke.
You mean it's only SOLD WITH THE SERVICE by T-Mobile, right?
When I signed up for GSM with AT&T (because only AT&T had a cell covering my Nevada place), they told me I could pull the SIM, put it in any other (US bands) GSM phone, and the service would work. The N900 has GSM on all the bands used in the US, according to its specs.
I haven't tried this yet (with a N900 or any other). But perhaps someone here has and can tell us if it works?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
However you would be reinventing the wheel by replacing the linux guy with an MS Exchange guy and coping with the changeover period, new servers etc BEFORE anyone can just sync to MS Exchange. If there is already something in another portion of the company to migrate to that saves a lot of pain, but change does not simply happen by fiat.
This guy is looking at extremely customized, many hours worth of work or days setups. If he can figure out even a fraction of that, he can figure out Windows SBS. If he can't, he's in the wrong job.
How's Android any more open than Nokia?
Nokia just announced its support for Qt as the main platform for all of its smartphones, whether Symbian or Linux-based. (Nokia owns Qt, and it's available as LGPL.) They're coming out with an XML-based GUI and HTML5 scripting, too.
You can develop for mobile, Linux, Windows, and Mac platforms. And you can use your choice of Lin/Mac/Win for dev, too, leveraging FOSS developers knowledge of Qt and Qt Creator.
There's an Android port of Qt, too.
You can also contribute mods/fixes to Qt, I'm not sure if that's the case with Android.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I understand that it was implied that many phones support MS Exchange, and thereby the original poster would not even be looking for a compatible phone were he using it.
Your other poirts are valid, but your tone is too belligerent.
I'd recommend trying Funambol. It's an open source sync server that works with SyncML. You can set up the server pretty easily on one of your work stations. There are sync clients for Evolution and just about every mobile phone. It has some short comings in that it doesn't support every single field in the various data types (contacts, calendar, events, notes) but for most people it's good enough.
this post is now diamonds!
I had some success using barry & opensync w/ the blackberry I used to use. SyncML is available for the Nokia N900 (Mameo), over USB only. There are other Mameo based phones out there, they may have have SyncML capabilities as well. It sounds as though a USB limitation might be preferable for your purposes anyway.
In a similar sized office I use Kerio's connect mail server. It allows active sync out of the box, is dead easy to install on Linux, win or Mac and easy to run. I have then used any old symbian nokia, win doze or android to sync. It is paid though unlike zimbra but I guess you pay for the simplicity of install and management
MS Exchange is not the simple well behaved beast you think it is. One trap for new players a few years ago was for it to install as a open relay be default. A *nix mail admin running MS Exchange IS in the wrong job without a bit of time to learn about the quirks of a new environment.
At least backups are now possible in MS Exchange without shutting down all of the services - but it's still not something that anyone coming from a different MTA would expect and it is very fragile so you don't want somebody learning on the job in a production environment with something so fragile and so difficult to backup and restore.
The advertisements lie when they say any idiot can run MS Exchange well without training or experience - for a start you need at least two servers to be really sure that users can send and recieve mail. It's a million miles away from just throwing sendmail, exim, postfix, qmail or whatever on a low powered PC and looking at the logs a year later to see it's happily handling 5000 emails a day without a hiccup. MS Exchange is a lot more than email and needs attention to keep it going. It's the only modern MTA in production use where people will actually tolerate lost emails - all the others moved past that point or were discarded in disgust years ago.
I regularly sync my old Nokia E61i with Evolution in my Fedora desktop. I believe the newer E70 series smartphones will also do the job.
Hi.
Also in a small office we use free version of Funambol with Symbian (e72, e71,...) phones.
We've been mostly happy with it.
http://wiki.kolab.org/Z_push
We use it.
I have tested with android and ipod touch.
Did you take a look at www.funambol.com ?
There is an open source server for PIM synchronization and open source clients for many mobile/desktop platforms.
Yeah, I know I just pissed off, like, 99.999% of the /. readingship, but this solution works like a G-D charm.
Or at least, I assume it does. Because I tell my iPhone that my Google-Apps domain is really an MS-exchange server, and THAT works perfectly.
I just realized my schedule must be really evill, I rely on Google, Apple and Microsoft(protocols) to get it to me.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Easiest solution: get a Palm Pre. There's a palm emulator called Classic for it. Run your old apps.
I don't know about the others, but the PalmPre has several servers it can sync to (all at the same time and same contact duplicated from several server will show up as a single person, thanks to Synergy).
among other options,it can sync to servers speaking Exchange protocol : something that evolutions does already. So it should work with the small business' setup, except it will sync over the net instead of through a direct USB/Serial connexion.
also,webOS is Linux based, lots of parts are Free Software, other parts are still hackable with accessible javascript source, uses a (saddly proprietary) simple interface based on HTML and Javascript, is able to run homebrew out of the box without any jailbreaking/root stupidity, has also support for SDLapplications and (since very recently) X11 applications.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Palm Pre is a solution too.
- it features a classic emulator too
- it can sync to servers speaking the Exchage protocol (like evolution)
So although it's not really synching directly over a USB/Serial cable like the question author wanted, the "cloud" in question could very well be their very own exchange-compatible evolution server, accessed over their own secured WiFi network. So i think most ethical problems won't be problematic anymore.
and if someone in the team is less ethically concerned and decides to use other cloud source, Synergy takes care to show contact which are the same person as merged.
also, the device it self is open-source friendly.
runs on linux
uses lots of free software components
lots of the rest has accessible javascript too.
has a simple (although sadly proprietary) interface based entirely on HTML+Javascript.
can run homebrew out of the box without any jailbreaking/rooting nonsense.
supports SDL and opengl based applications.
has also recently an alpha X11 server (it's not as complete as N900's - it just run a X11 server as an app card, if you need it - for example to quickly do some remote administration with a SSH X tunnel)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The key is in the protocols. Pick open protocols that a variety of devices support. For example I use:
* iCal for calendaring (apt-get install calendarserver)
* imap for email (apt-get install dovecot-imapd)
* ldap for contact management (apt-get install slapd)
I'll add a bit about the use of openoffice in business that may also shed a bit of light.
IMHO there are two reasons why an openoffice deployment gets replaced.
The first is scope creep. The people that normally only work on internal stuff and really only need a glass typewriter suddenly get given an external facing task and some idiot has sent them a *.docx file or similar thing they don't normally deal with. When everything from wordperfect on would normally do the job they now need MS Office.
The second is reason is "the dog ate my homework". Uncompleted tasks are blamed on the software, so you then buy them MS Office, and then find they don't know how to use that either (eg. a lot of time wasted googling trying to work out why a user couldn't save as PDF when it turned out they hadn't even attempted "save as").
I suppose a third reason would be if one of the rare people that actually does macros in MS Office was given openoffice instead and expected to be instantly as productive, but if that happens you have bigger problems and an inflexible policy and that person never should have had openoffice in the first place.
Where it DOES work is places where you have technical documents going out in relatively tamper free PDF and don't have to trust some external collaborator to not make subtle changes to the words that have been signed off. MS Word is still utter crap at handling embedded images in documents so it's a time saver to use anything else as soon as a document gets complex. If the workflow is to type your own stuff and print or export to PDF openoffice works.
There's always a conflict between the users expecting everything instantly and for free and the contraint of having a budget that often leads to situations where everything is held together by chewing gum and string unless a lot of care is taken. It sounds like you wandered into one of those situations.