[libreoffice-marketing] Re: Indian academic institutions forced to use MS Office

HI Kannan and Charles,

If we are to expound the values of LibreOffice in the educational sphere 
we need to list those values that really count. We already know of the 
obvious ones of file compatibility etc., but we need to work on the 
assets that really count to educational organizations. Here is what I 
believe LibreOffice needs to offer to become a solid contender in the 
"educational organization office suite arena".

========================

What I believe would be on an educational IT list of "must-haves"

========================

* LTS version (like it or not, an LTS version is most likely a 
show-stopper for most educational organizations here in N.America (not 
sure how much in EU or Asian etc markets), this is just the reality of 
the way the system works. Educational organizations work on long range 
planning and they do not like software where there is no long term 
support -- 2 yrs LTS is what I would consider the shortest acceptable 
term, and, even then, there would most likely be push back at such a 
short term, even making it 2.5yrs would be better than only 2yr LTS. 
Regarding LTS versions and LibreOffice: we just can't seem to 
acknowledge/admit to the need for an LTS version. We seem to think that 
the system will bend to our will, but it does not nor will it. 
Educational organizations work on fixed income delivered through 
political policy, these policies come with fixed terms and thus, budgets 
also then come with fixed terms of expenses. All IT is then measured by 
predictable costs of expense and LTS versions offer this -- that is to 
say, an LTS version represents to IT staff a predictable expense cost 
over a certain term of months/yrs. If you manage a small educational 
setup of 10,000 computers, then paying the MSO tax for an LTS version is 
a lot less trouble than going with another office suite that has no LTS 
and thus possible unpredictable costs of maintenance and 
trouble-shooting. Even FF has recognized this and has its own LTS 
version that is used by the edu. 
organizations.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox#Extended_Support_Release])

* easily configurable to cloud solutions (we need to list the 
solutions). Educational organizations do not really care of MSO365 or of 
the MS cloud. They would prefer to work things out on their intranet. 
Different stack solutions are more interesting to them. I would suggest 
we propose a working variety of stacks, with proof of concept where 
educational organizations could see it at work, Some organizations may 
in fact team up with LibreOffice to make this work.

* available and accredited support solutions for large enterprise 
installations (this is a must!!!) (if we are saving the organizations a 
large chunk of their budget, it then makes sense that they will have a 
bit of it to pay for IT support from TDF/LibreOffice accredited sources, 
it is pretty certain that the educational IT departments will use this 
money for technical help. All levels of help will most likely be best to 
make available to the organizations.)

* available on many operating systems (we already have this)

* a robust help network from experienced users (we already have this)

* QA response (I don't really consider our QA worse than that of MS and 
the team is working on quicker QA) (our dev response to QA identified 
problems with the suite is quite rapid and IMO quicker than MS)

========================

Must haves for educational organization users

========================

* large bank of clipart installable on their intranet (we could have 
this from the openclipart.org site. The organizations will want to have 
the clipart reside on their system to optimize for speed. We could 
create a bank of clipart or banks of different sizes for their use or 
users' use -- downloadable from our extensions site)

* bank of templates (we don't have enough, we need to establish a team 
of template creators whose primary objective is to create templates, the 
planning pages may be found here 
[https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Ideas/Template_team]

* documentation that is easily obtainable and in large sets (we already 
have a prolific docs team that keeps all module textbooks up to date. 
Printed materials can be bought in small/large amounts from Lulu.com

* a competent bibliographic tool. (by all accounts, the LibreOffice 
bibliographic tool is not useful enough for serious work. It has been 
suggested that it be scrapped and re-built. OR in the meantime, we could 
partner up with Zotero and make sure the Zotero plugin has oversight by 
our devs who would make sure the plugin work correctly OR alternatively, 
create our own Zotero plugin to LibreOffice. Either way, we would need 
to provide a competent bibliographic tool for our educational org. users 
[you may find a discussion here: 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/LibreOffice_In_Academia]

This to me would go a long way in making LibreOffice a serious contender 
in the educational organization office suite arena and help capture a 
larger portion of that market share.

Cheers,

Marc



Le 24/04/13 12:00 PM, Charles-H. Schulz a écrit :
> They do it in France as well and in many other countries. The cost is
> one argument, but then there can be other arguments on costs as well.
> This being said, there are plenty of policy arguments to counter that.
>
> best,
> Charles.
>
> Le mercredi 24 avril 2013 à 20:26 +0530, Kannan Moudgalya a écrit :
> > MS is giving this solution to India free of cost!
> >
> > Kannan



--
Marc Paré
Marc@MarcPare.com
http://www.parEntreprise.com
parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF)
parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org


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