The SOREON TCO case studies show: Savings of up to 25% are possible with alternatives to Microsoft Office. Significant savings potentials for the license and operating costs make Open Source programs, like OpenOffice or StarOffice, an alternative to Microsoft to be reckoned with.
Medium enterprises can enjoy the greatest savings potential with Office. Companies with more than 1,000 office workstations have the greatest savings potential, as they possess a professional IT department and hence can efficiently deploy new Open Source software.
Small enterprises with up to 100 office workstations hardly benefit from savings when switching over to any of the Microsoft alternatives. The re-training of the employees and the additional support expenditure is too costly - even if hard cash can be saved when it comes to the licenses.
Global enterprises and very large organizations can realize savings of up to 20% in Office-Desktop related TCO. The savings potential, however, shrinks relative to the number of clients, as Microsoft increasingly offers licenses to the larger key accounts at very attractive cut prices to beat the competition.
The most important cost drivers for Office systems are support and administration. Support and administration generally account for over 70% of the TCO of a desktop office system. It is therefore of vital importance that a software vendor is also in a position to offer cost-effective support agreements in this area.
Open Source programs also offer large savings potentials for Groupware servers. Open Source Groupware is up to 83% less costly than proprietary solutions. The greatest cost advantages arise for medium to large enterprises embracing new products like Open-Exchange or OpenGroupware.
Every business and every administration must carry out a detailed, individual TCO analysis for its organization. Prior to deciding in favor of a switch over to Open Source products or any other alternatives to Microsoft, every enterprise must carry out some alternatives to Microsoft, every enterprise must carry out some internal analyses of their databases and their migration objectives. The SOREON model is intended to serve as a guideline and help to determine relevant cost categories.
Open Source software for the desktop and office area will spread en masse in enterprises and administrations. Many software manufacturers will open their software to the Open Source model and try to tap into new sources of revenues from services - just as Sun and Novell have already done.
Open Source software and proprietary software converge on software networks. Open Source must become more professional and further adapt itself to the proprietary model. At the same time, manufacturers of proprietary software can benefit from the advantages offered by Open Source by opening up their software: Lower development costs, unassisted marketing and new sources of revenues through services.
Die vollständige Studie kann bei Soreon erworben werden.