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Although a certain lack of quality, there exists already a number of companies and public institutions that took the decision to shift their software installations from MSOffice® to OpenOffice.org.
In fact, the actual trend of public institutions goes toward replacing the Microsoft Office installations with the OpenOffice.org productivity suite. This continues a worldwide trend of governments attempting to cut costs through open-source software. The first institutions to go this direction are the Israel Department of Commerce and the City of Austin, Texas.
The Department of Commerce has made a strategic decision to reduce government dependency on Microsoft and to replace most of its Microsoft Office desktops with OpenOffice. On the other hand the City of Austin is planning the migration of several hundred desktops, running with Microsoft Office installations, to OpenOffice.org. The IT management will start this movement initially as a test program beginning in January. In the case of a satisfying performance the city has the technical ability to uninstall MSOffice from 80% of their 5000 desktop PCs, which as a consequence could shrink the licensing expenses by 3 million dollars over 2 years.
An important aspect to point out is that open source software is not accessible by everyone, because it requires a certain level of technical expertise. On the contrary the advantages of this kind of software are that vendors cannot accuse you for software theft and that software is much cheaper or free. But to be able to apply it in production support for IT-management and special trainings for employees are often needed.
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