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Forrester Research Shows Steep Decline in Free Office Suite Stats

Posted by timothy on from the file-formats-rule-the-world dept.

An anonymous reader writes that although many Linux users (and others) are at home with OpenOffice and LibreOffice, typical organizations are as addicted as ever to MS office formats. In 2011 13% of organizations had OpenOffice variants installed on some computers. Today that number has dipped to 5% according to Forrester Research. ... The poll included [shows totals] over 100% as many organizations have multiple versions of offices installed. Also surprising, Office 2003 is alive kicking and screaming as almost 1/3 of companies and governments still use it even though EOL for Office 2003 ends with XP on the same date! The good news is online cloud-based platforms are gaining traction with Google Docs and Office 365 which are not so tied to Windows on the client."

2 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Re:155 Forrester Clients by mspohr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good point... this is a survey of 155 Forrester clients. People who are Forrester clients are the dinosaurs of the business world. They have to pay Forrester to get a clue. I wouldn't put much stock in these numbers.
    (Interesting that the article shows 13% use Google Docs... maybe that's where all the users went.)

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  2. Re:Office 365 by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What is the benefit of cloud-based office software? I understand it allows the service provider to demand rent indefinitely. What benefit does it provide to the end-user?

    Easy. I can view my docs anywhere. From my phone, home pc, work pc, whatever. Dropbox has some of this but office file compatibility is a problem for example when it comes to spreadsheets.

    Second, it is a damn pain in the ass to setup software to be updated and pushed on thousands of PCs in a work envrionment. With this you push a group policy for a hyperlink. Sovled as the website or intranet site takes care of everything. No hunting down damn Outlook archive folders when upgrading a PC. If a company wants something confidential they flag it and it instantly is unavailable elsewhere. On the cloud means it wont leave on flash drivers either.

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