[plug] alternative business strategy?

[Bernd Felsche]

Quintin Lette <qlette at gmail.com> writes:

>> Has M$ published the file format?

>Highly unlikely that they have or ever will...

>> cheap != free.

>free software also != cheap

No software is cheap; but it has the potential to be cheaper than
the alternatives of getting the same thing done.

>(the only cost that is cut is the license cost, which is generally a
>small percentage of a large NFPs IT costs, it is a larger percentage
>for regular businesses, there are also the added reeducation costs,
>and higher initial support costs while they work out how to use the
>new products)

Sorry; I don't buy the reeducation costs. IME, it's equivalent to
going to a later version of software.

The biggest IT costs (after licences) are in support. That's where
the major spending occurs; moreso with Windows-based systems that
need to keep working than with more robust environments.

Have you considered for example the cost of the ATO issuing new
certificates? Every business has spent between 2 and 8 hours trying
to get the damned ECI working as it was before the upgrade. That
tens to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of IT support.

Every time M$ lets a SurprisePack escape, something stops working
and it takes millions of hours in aggregate time to fix the problem.

That sort of thing hits NFPs very hard.

>> The money is still channelled from their income stream to M$. The
>> business of NFP's is to provide a service or a product to worthy
>> targets, not to feed a machine that doesn't need feeding.

>however they still require the tools to go about their business, and
>in the case of NFP businesses that already have an IT infrastructure,
>the cost of change would be more than the savings by moving to OSS.

Of course they need tools to do the job. The name of the game is
howver one of continuous improvement to make everybody more effective
in what they are doing. And in the big picture of IT, that means
that people need to be continuously trained and encouraged to learn
so that they can better understand the purpose of what they are
doing. That results in greater creativity, innovation and
efficiency.

If you want to avoid training costs, and keep doing things like you
have in the past, then even for the NFPs, that'll result in them
being out-paced by "competitors".

>> What if another organization sends them Framemaker, inDesign, Quark
>> or PageStream files?

>they would pay someone to convert it i guess, or ask them to resend
>in Publisher, I haven't seen many being sent in those formats,
>.pub files are something I do see frequently though.

That's only because Publisher files are fairly common.

>> The most important thing for non-profit organizatiosn is that they
>> shouldn't put themselves into a situation where they can be held to
>> ransom.

>I thought the most important thing was that they ran their business...
>generally NFPs go looking for a grant of some variety when they have
>an IT upgrade requirement. <guess> It may also be a hard sell to the
>organisation providing the grant if they are planning to go against
>the norm and use OSS </guess>

Don't guess. Governments are all looking very seriously at OSS as a
means of preventing them being tied into proprietary formats.

>> That actually applies to all, but is especially important for NFP
>> because unlike "real businesses", they can't simply increase the
>> price of their "product" to pay the upgrade fines ermm fees...

>no but they can look for a grant in desperation :)

Grants take *years* to obtain. See if your stamp-collecting club can
get a grant.

>funny thing is, 6 months ago I would have fought for the "move to OSS"
>side, however since I now work with a lot of NFP organisations and
>have seen first hand their requirements I no longer feel that its that
>easy/cheap a task.

It's not easy. Another view of the IT picture is that the move to
OSS is future-proofing. It not only means that you don't have to pay
for the licence fees this time around; but that you never again
have to pay for the licences/upgrades. 

The other advantage with OSS is one of competitive support. Patches
to OOo can be made by anybody. Ignore that official patches are
free of charge; and look at the typical time to fix the problem; or
even to add desirable features.

>I actually feel that its much more achievable for regular businesses
>since the licensing cost easily exceeds $2000 per seat for the full
>suite of Microsoft products, but in either case, it is only really
>feasible if they are about to take on a major upgrade anyway, hence
>already requiring retraining of staff members. Remembering also that

You appear to assume that even adequate training of staff takes
place. It'd be a novel concept for almost every business that I've
seen.  Training is limited to pressing the blue button to dispense a
banana.

There's always time for massive cockups, but never time to train.

>any organisation using Exchange will have a hard time moving as there
>is no real OSS equivilent, and Exchange connectors for Evolution suck
>(try using public folders) if you want to just move away from office
>first.

Exchange is evil. I can give you a million reasons why it is so.
The greatest evil is that it tries to do everything.

It's very pretty. But it's not, from the Outlook perspective,
intuitive for people to use if efficiently because it is trying to
hide the underlying complexity. It obfuscates its purpose and
thereby causes confusion. Hence few people use it for little more
than a corporate address book and mail server.

Those that beat their forehead against the CRT hard enough, and try
to utilise everything that Exchange should be able to do are
frustrated by the lack of others being able to collaborate because
it's a very steep learning curve with no sign posts or guard rails
to stop the bind-folded novice from plunging into despair.

A combination of simple tools is a far better business choice if you
want people to be able to learn to use them with minimal training.
-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ /  ASCII ribbon campaign | "Laws do not persuade just because
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/ \  and postings          | Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.