- Is Microsoft preparing us to move beyond Vista?
- Why Google wanted to lose wireless spectrum auction
- iPhone shortage fuels rumors of imminent 3G phone
- XP for cheap PCs: a second crack in the wall
- Darts into data: Leveraging random action to competitive advantage
- Most iPhone buyers are existing Apple customers
- AT&T's so-called open network principles
- Mono dev tool offered
- ActiveState upgrades IDE
- Serena plans SaaS products
October 05, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Sun Google deal worth a second look
Although the esteemed Forbes magazine says the Google Sun news is much ado about nothing, I say it is worth a second look.
With all the rumors that Google would soon launch an on demand or software as a service version of Sun's Star/OpenOffice productivity suite, following the Google Sun joint press conference, I thought it would be interesting to talk to the product manager at Star Office, Iyer Venkatesan.
Venkatesan has a lot of interesting things to say and unlike many others in this industry he was honest, not trying to convince me that StarOffice was perfect.
The first thing Venkatesan said was that no one should expect 100 percent compatibility with all of Microsoft marcos, espcially in Excel.
There are some more advanced macros that just do not translate easily. However, using the 80-20 rule, 80 percent of the users will access only 20 percent of the features, for many users StarOffice is an inexpensive alternative to Microsoft Office.
And Venkatesan added, "we have removed a large barrier for enterprise adoption with a Microsoft Office macro converter."
The converter translates both Word and Excel macros. Also included in StarOffice version 8 is a document analyzer which takes centrally stored documents, for example, an analyzes them to tell you how long it has been since they were accessed.
This is handy tool to have before anyone bothers to convert a file that nobody uses anyway.
In addition, the analyzer will tell you how many macros are in the file and classifies the conversion process into easy, moderate or advanced categories.
This tool can help a manager calculate man hours to conversion in order to decide whether they should bother to move it over or not.
Before anyone decides Star/OpenOffice is not meant for serious users, I suggest you take a look and decide for yourself.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on October 5, 2005 02:27 PM
RATE THIS ARTICLE:
-
- COMMENTS
TOP STORIES
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Remote Access: Maintain Security and Decrease the Burden on IT
- Beyond AntiVirus: Symantec Endpoint Protection
- What Every Enterprise Needs to Know About VDI
- Disaster Recovery in Minutes
- Protecting Microsoft(R) Applications
- Reduce Recovery Times and Tape Costs
