Btw, are there some features that you feel that you're missing?
Because the license cost savings are so small compared to the payroll costs of the people using the software that even a small hit in efficiency from existing staff (and new staff as rotation occurs) being less familiar will outweigh it quite easily.
Heck, its also why lots of firms give a pass to major version upgrades even when their license would allow the major version to be rolled out at no additional license cost until the version they are on is old enough that it is causing a drag because any new staff are having trouble converting back to the old version.
Although I definitely agree that Word and friends are good products.
One of the biggest reasons the company I was working with at the time made the switch was sheet size, we came up against the 65536 rows limit at least once. Formula calculation speed was another big one. In many ways the ribbon does feel like a step forward, perhaps the only thing 2003 still does better is keyboard shortcuts, but luckily you can still use Excel 2003 keyboard shortcuts in newer versions if you can remember them (Alt,d,f,f and Alt,d,f,s are probably the ones I use most frequently).
At which point you have a database and would be better served with a different product designed to work with large data sets or moving data to external ODBC sources that Excel can query.
Licensing costs are only a small fraction overall cost:
* Training and lost productivity as users learn the new software. It may seem simple to you, but many end users are easily confused by interface changes. Also, there is a serious learning curve for users doing complex tasks (e.g., complex spreadsheets; long, complex documents, etc.)
* IT labor costs: Configuration, deployment, administration and support; doing it on 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 desktops, local, remote, and at home, is expensive and challenging. Is LibreOffice fully integrated with Active Directory? With whatever deployment and patch mechanisms you use (think about that, how do you patch 10,000 desktops? Consider that an error could effectively shut down your entire company)? How available are support, labor and tools? How available are IT professionals with expertise in these areas (i.e., who will you hire? What happens to your existing staff)? Users tend to think of these things as peripheral, but they are the largest items on the IT budget. Microsoft Office passes meets all these needs with flying colors.
* Integration with other systems: Every other application and system is designed and supported for integration with and Microsoft Office. Every vendor has staff experienced in this integration.
* Data integrity: What happens when the total in the Excel spreadsheet is wrong because the formula didn't convert properly? Employees would have to check for formatting and other errors in every important file where data integrity matters. Consider that, because most people in business use Microsoft Office, many documents will be converted back and forth frequently. That means employees have to deal with these issues repeatedly, verifying conversion will be accurate before sending the presentation to the client; verifying the spreadsheets' values and formulas, in case someone on the other end decides to change some numbers; fixing these problems ... and explaining constantly to everyone outside the organization why you have these continual problems.
Much as I support FOSS, LibreOffice isn't a consideration for many businesses.
But most of it boils down to MS Office was there first (and made by the same company as the OS).
Each of your bullet points assumes a migration from Office to LO, and that there isn't already an infrastructure that supports it.
hackuser's points about the cost of labor and the enormous potential cost of mistakes are very well made. If you are paying knowledge workers $50,000 to $150,000 a year, then saving pennies on the cost of Office is not a smart move. When mistakes can cost your company a lot more than that, even more so....
But they weren't made by the same company as the OS was.
And I do agree that moving away from MS Office would be very foolish, if money saving is the reason behind it.
I don't think I'd ever give anyone an odt document; the rare doc I produce with LO is exported to PDF before sending, not the least because virtually no one has LO or even knows what it is. And if I export to some Word format, who the hell knows what version of Word is on the other end? It's just not worth it.
If someone insists on a Word doc, I'll write a plain text document, give it a .doc suffix, and when the other end double clicks on it, it will open in Word.
It is, but from experience, people will find a way to complain.
Should be, but when it comes down to it, it just isn't Microsoft Office. Kind of like GIMP isn't Photoshop.
> Btw, are there some features that you feel that you're missing?
As a Mac user - full integration into the desktop experience. We get the same from Microsoft Office, but, of course, it's Microsoft Office and we're used to it there.
Look, I'm not going to claim that it makes sense. However, if you're going to beat Microsoft Office, you have to be far, far better than it. No almost-there, not equal, but demonstrably better.
And not on moral grounds, either. Most users aren't going to give a damn about moral grounds.
Also bear in mind that Office is a moving target. Office 2016 is due out this year... http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/22/microsoft-announces-office...
They also just look uglier. I have not looked at this new LO version yet.
Though this is becoming less and less of an issue, I still keep Office 2007 in a virtual machine just to turn them at least into PDFs.
Would switching to Libre Office actually save me money or would it cost me money?
People using MS Office are knowledge workers. They make money from their knowledge and their ability to manipulate knowledge tools such as MS Office.
Without volume licensing, MS Office is $99 a year for each worker (and many companies pay a bit less than that). Let's say the average worker at your firm makes $50,000. If you have a full benefits package, that adds tens of thousands to their cost. Add in computers, office space, etc. and that worker could cost you upwards of $100,000 a year.
Now look at that $99 a year cost for that one employee. Sure saving $99 would be nice, but what if switching made that employee 5 percent less productive? What if that employee has to interface with outside clients who use other programs and this causes issues with interoperability?
For me, as a manager, $99 a year is nothing if it makes my employees more productive. On the other hand, saving $99 for something that makes my employees less productive costs me a ton of money.
Nickel and diming knowledge workers is not a good way to make them productive or to keep them happy. This is why I don't care what programs employees like to use or even what OS they use. I want them as productive and happy as possible.
At a previous job I was forced to use Windows, even though I've been an OS X users since 10.1. The reasoning was that a Windows machine was cheaper to purchase and maintain for the IT department. Let's say the difference was something like $250-500 over the course of that machine's life (which could be four years or so). Is the IT staff saving a few hundred bucks really worth a significant drop in productivity for an employee?
Because my old job put computer and software purchases under IT, instead of my department, the IT department got to make their budget smaller by making my department less productive. Had the budget rested with my manager, of course I would have gotten the machine I wanted because a few hundred dollars for a big productivity boost is a no brainer for him.
I know how to use Windows well and can get work done on it, but I am more productive with the OS of my choice (and the applications that go along with it). With knowledge work, five percent productivity gain here, five percent productivity gain there and you're talking about a lot of money.
Open Office: https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=3959
Libre Office: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38262
I have a half-hearted look for it every time I fire up a new version of Open/Libre office but I've stopped bothering to check for it actively.
Seems baffling to me that this wouldn't be a higher priority issue as this seems to be the commonest mode of use of Word for creating new documents - where the absolute commonest mode is using an existing document as a template and forgetting to change headers, metadata, and random boilerplate text throughout :)
Most people don't use Access.
Joe Marketing ain't going to jump through UI hoops and do complex bug work-arounds, when he can avoid this entirely by buying a MS office license for 200 USD or whatever the price is.
A couple of the senior people write queries and import routines, and the clerks/etc use them in their workflow. Works great.
Also, Calc has Python (and other language scripting) which puts it above Excel in my book. For built in functions yes Excel is better. As soon as you start venturing outside of Spreadsheets and into data analysis (where Macro's come into play) stop using Excel. Move to Matlab or Pandas. Excel Macro's should not be used as a selling point, they are rarely, if ever, the right tool for the job. At least with Calc you can take the business logic from your Macro's and move them into a real script. VBA isn't C# nor VB.Net compatable.
I see Excel users in 2 camps:
Those that don't know what functions are, and if the do, tread carefully with '=if(...,...)' and get intrigued. Though those that get intrigued are in a minority.
Those that know what functions are have Excel act as a full-fledged IDE, which it does pretty well. This second camp either write libraries to call from Excel, or have someone write them in C++ if the libraries are that important.
Excel is exceedingly good for hacking, or I should say, playing. It is not a spreadsheet, it is an extension of skin from keyboard to screen for visualizing data, from brain to 2D hackable multi-dimensional grid, that is as easy as playdough.
Vendors include SAS, Oracle, IBM, Predixion.
Also Excel is used as a self-service BI tool. It has ETL, OLAP and dynamic dashobarding.
Excel (and other spreadsheet packages like Calc) are good for non technical users it's useful for rapidly prototyping stuff but it is absolutely a pain for automation and any type of statistical heavy lifting. Once a spreadsheet reaches a certain level of complexity it becomes a pain to support and maintain much better to have a real database driving things.
I've heard a lot about R which is kind of an open-source version of SAS (at least the statistical parts) not sure what its automation and reporting support is like my limited understanding is it doesn't have the BI parts.
If Excel had a real scripting language as it's Macro language the problem wouldn't be nearly so bad. All that business code could just be copy/pasted, have some unit tests implemented then refactored so that the accountants code is now updated by the developer. As it is now the code has to completely rewritten in a new language.
As for the language choice, VB.Net or C# would be fine. I'm not saying it has to be Python. My complaint is that the code is non-transferrable. The apps cannot grow past Excel, and the email the most recent version to the next guy game gets you into versioning hell rather quickly.
He wants his pivot tables, KPIs and Solver and some macros. He wants point-and-click ETL. If it's a department/cross-department model, do it in SQL Server, or whatever else you use. You can use your IT kung-fu there. This is about what libre office lacks. Excel has power and flexibility and remains easy to use for non-programmers.
My issues with Excel come from the perspective of modifying these ad-hoc apps (many business run off these for a long time as they grow). Yes, there are other great features, but for me, for growth, Calc is taking a better approach.
There are some niche industries, like finance, where there are legacy spreadsheets (where, scarily, much of the business is run. Wall Street runs on Excel spreadsheets) that don't run, and with users who have a very unique knowledge and can't easily accommodate the change, but that is a small minority.
For new and growing companies that just need this sort of functionality, these apps are fantastic.