# MS Office vs OpenOffice for the CAF & DND (From: The Defence Budget)



## dapaterson (17 Aug 2013)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> Migrating to a completely different office suite is neither easy, or cheap. We'd spend far more than we'd save with all the helpdesk headaches and migration headaches for very little gain.



So, as we move from Office 2003 to Office 2010, and from XP to Windows 7, why not move to a suite we don't pay millions in licensing fees for annually?


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## Inquisitor (17 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> So, as we move from Office 2003 to Office 2010, and from XP to Windows 7, why not move to a suite we don't pay millions in licensing fees for annually?



Sounds like a great idea. Though the apparent savings might be lost when one considers compatibility issues with other Canadian and Foreign users, when exchanging info. 

Then there are conversion and training costs that would also eat away at the savings


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## PuckChaser (17 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> So, as we move from Office 2003 to Office 2010, and from XP to Windows 7, why not move to a suite we don't pay millions in licensing fees for annually?



Lets switch to Linux as well, or maybe a distributed computing model to save money on individual desktops? Those millions saved annually are going to go directly into the understaffed helpdesks, and with Shared Services Canada, we're now the only agency using a Linux/Open Office platform, dumping even more money and PYs into supporting a one-off system.


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## dapaterson (17 Aug 2013)

GoC should make the move wholesale to OpenOffice.  It's compatible (enough) with MS.

Pissing away millions a year to Bill Gates for zero operational benefit is a waste of scare dollars.


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## FJAG (18 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> GoC should make the move wholesale to OpenOffice.  It's compatible (enough) with MS.
> 
> Pissing away millions a year to Bill Gates for zero operational benefit is a waste of scare dollars.



Actually such a move would be very costly. There are many existing software elements throughout DND and the government that interconnect to MSOffice (SharePoint, RDIMS) that would not work with Open Office.

Further, most workers we hire have already trained or worked with MSOffice and so there is rarely a need to retrain.

The vast business and government workplace are mostly MSOffice users which make interoperability and sharing of documents in their native format very easy. While OpenOffice is relatively compatible, its not perfectly compatible and as a result workers have to do extra work if opening legacy MSOffice files or doing collaborative work with MSOffice workers in other departments. I think you will find that the improvements within MSOffice and SharePoint make collaborative work one of the great beauties of the across-the-board MS systems.

MSOffice (together with most MS products) have been extensively tested by DND and are secure programs that work effectively in all our systems. A changeover would require extensive security and interoperability reviews by ADM(IM). Our back end tech staff knows how to remote update, lock down functions, and maintain MS systems, A switchover, even if acceptable from a security point of view, would cause extensive turbulence, direct costs and lost opportunity costs.

I think OpenOffice has many uses; particularly for single users and small office where outside collaboration is not an issue but mega businesses like the Government of Canada need a much more robust, secure and interoperable system than OpenOffice (even 4.0) can make available.  :2c:

Here's a short article about a German city that went to OpenOffice in 2007 and in 2012 went back to MSOffice because OpenOffice simply wasn't up to the job.

http://betanews.com/2012/12/11/one-german-city-drops-openoffice-for-ms-office-why-open-source-still-fails-to-impress/


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## dapaterson (18 Aug 2013)

MS Office is *not* secure; but it has a company we can blame when insecurities pop up, as has happened numerous times in the past and will again in future.  I have yet to hear of MS granting any rebates when its software fails, making me wonder why we're paying millions every year.

I'd be curious to see a true cost analysis of switching; turning off the millions we pour into MS yearly for our site licenses vs the one-times costs of switching would be an interesting analysis.

SharePoint successfully locks away information from users by imposing byzantine access rules; it's part and parcel of DND/CF's desire to classify and designate beyond reason.  Tools that lessen the ability to restrict information are needed; not tools that increase layers of access control.


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## Robert0288 (18 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> MS Office is *not* secure; but it has a company we can blame when insecurities pop up, as has happened numerous times in the past and will again in future.  I have yet to hear of MS granting any rebates when its software fails, making me wonder why we're paying millions every year.
> 
> I'd be curious to see a true cost analysis of switching; turning off the millions we pour into MS yearly for our site licenses vs the one-times costs of switching would be an interesting analysis.



But would it really be just a 1 time cost?  If MS Office is not secure and insecurities continue to popup.  It is MS that creates patches and hotfixes for its problems.  If we move to open office, who would be replace them, the CF or SSC?  What is the cost of making sure these patches and updates are actually secure?  From my understanding Open office exactly that.  Open.  How secure would our networks be after implementing a product that has this kind of potential to be exploited.  I'm by no means an expert, but it just gets me thinking.... And also playing devils advocate


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## Furniture (18 Aug 2013)

Back around '04-'05 the CFWOS (Canadian Forces Weather and Oceanographic Service) computers changed to a Linux OS with Open Office as our word processor and PowerPoint clone. They were explained to us users by the IT guys as a better way to do things and far cheaper than Microsoft, what they turned out to be was prone to crashes and frustratingly incompatible with the DWAN computers using Windows. Open source software might be great for guys that like to play with computers at home, but for use as a office system my experience has led me to believe they are inappropriate.


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## JorgSlice (18 Aug 2013)

WeatherdoG said:
			
		

> Back around '04-'05 the CFWOS (Canadian Forces Weather and Oceanographic Service) computers changed to a Linux OS with Open Office as our word processor and PowerPoint clone. They were explained to us users by the IT guys as a better way to do things and far cheaper than Microsoft, what they turned out to be was prone to crashes and frustratingly incompatible with the DWAN computers using Windows. Open source software might be great for guys that like to play with computers at home, but for use as a office system my experience has led me to believe they are inappropriate.



I worked in a department within an organisation that utilised Open Source systems and actually encourage their usage, despite the rest of the org using MS Suite. Never had any issues, compatibility was seamless as long as you saved the docs as .doc .ppt .xls etc.

However, I would see how in 04/05 could have been a little rocky. Its greatly improved since for sure.


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## PuckChaser (18 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> MS Office is *not* secure;



No piece of commercially available software is ever secure. The amount of people who in their spare time look for vulnerabilities (especially in the world's most used productivity suite) is exponentially higher than the number of coders closing those loopholes. We compound this issue by running a 10 year old Office suite and a 12 year old (non-supported by Vendor) operating system. Or hindrance isn't the licensing fees (that many other companies pay, its the cost of doing business), its the Baseline system that probably hasn't changed since Windows 98. Most problems I've ever had with my DWAN PCs are Baseline corrupting itself seemingly at random. We need to scrap Baseline and start using the myriad of programs including in the Server 2003 and Windows suite that we already pay for to keep drives synced, and programs up to date. Your millions in savings would be reducing the helpdesk hours designated to fix a Baseline failure that happens more than it should.


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## Occam (18 Aug 2013)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> No piece of commercially available software is ever secure. The amount of people who in their spare time look for vulnerabilities (especially in the world's most used productivity suite) is exponentially higher than the number of coders closing those loopholes. We compound this issue by running a 10 year old Office suite and a 12 year old (non-supported by Vendor) operating system. Or hindrance isn't the licensing fees (that many other companies pay, its the cost of doing business), its the Baseline system that probably hasn't changed since Windows 98. Most problems I've ever had with my DWAN PCs are Baseline corrupting itself seemingly at random. We need to scrap Baseline and start using the myriad of programs including in the Server 2003 and Windows suite that we already pay for to keep drives synced, and programs up to date. Your millions in savings would be reducing the helpdesk hours designated to fix a Baseline failure that happens more than it should.



Already happening;  SCCM is doing most of the work now.


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## dapaterson (18 Aug 2013)

Latest in our brilliant IT architecture: Personal Folders for Outlook will no longer be permitted on network drives - they'll have to be stored on local machines.  (Part of the Win 7 /Office 2k10 migration).  Your archives will no longer be accessible if you have to log on on a different computer.

Contracting the DWAN out to Google (Gmail, Google docs) begins to sound better and better...  >


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## George Wallace (18 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> Latest in our brilliant IT architecture: Personal Folders for Outlook will no longer be permitted on network drives - they'll have to be stored on local machines.  (Part of the Win 7 /Office 2k10 migration).  Your archives will no longer be accessible if you have to log on on a different computer.
> 
> Contracting the DWAN out to Google (Gmail, Google docs) begins to sound better and better...  >



Or, heaven forbid, everyone is issued a 1 TB portable drive....... ;D


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## secondchance (18 Aug 2013)

I use OpenOffice at home and I sm hapy with it.


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## George Wallace (18 Aug 2013)

secondchance said:
			
		

> I use OpenOffice at home and I sm hapy with it.



Using it at home and at DND are two different things. 

PS.  Your spell checker doesn't work.


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## PuckChaser (18 Aug 2013)

George Wallace said:
			
		

> Or, heaven forbid, everyone is issued a 1 TB portable drive....... ;D



If you need to collect 1TB of information in your email, you need your own hoarders show on A&E. That being said, I absolutely agree that everyone should have a USB drive with their DWAN account, would remove a lot of load on the servers if you carried your stuff around everywhere.


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## GAP (18 Aug 2013)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> I absolutely agree that everyone should have a USB drive with their DWAN account, would remove a lot of load on the servers if you carried your stuff around everywhere.



Actually, you might as well publish it. That option offers zero security and encourages removal of data by USB device....didn't we just go through that little scenerio? .....


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## George Wallace (18 Aug 2013)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> If you need to collect 1TB of information in your email, you need your own hoarders show on A&E.



Have you ever seen an OPs WOs mail box?   ;D

There are other items of data that people use on a regular basis, other than their email.  Depending on Trade, some of those data storage requirements may be quite high.  I have had to save to disc large parts of my Q Drive over the years, and clean up our N Drive at least three times in the last three years, saving to an external hard drive on loan from the IT people.  Now they want their loaner back.  Where do we now save much of this reference material so that others in the unit can easily access it?  Having our own dedicated Server is out of the question.  Even the suggestion that we purchase a 3 TB drive for their Server, to be shared with other units as well, was turned down by the IT folk.  


The amount of data that we are starting to work with, access, store, etc. is getting larger.  Making our storage capabilities smaller seems more than illogical.


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## s2184 (18 Aug 2013)

Are there any Government entities similar to DND currently using Open Office instead of MS Suite? 

What about other countries? Are they using Open Source? 

Is Open Source recommended for government sectors? What are the risk factors? Are you prepared to face them?


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## Robert0288 (18 Aug 2013)

PuckChaser said:
			
		

> I absolutely agree that everyone should have a USB drive with their DWAN account



The security guy in me just had a heart attack and died.  As it is, how many people do you think actually use the scrubbers like they're supposed to? Or will loose it on the bus, or in the parking lot while filled with information that shouldn't be lost.


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## Harris (18 Aug 2013)

IMO it is not the amount of data per se that is the issue.  It is the fact that we (the CF we) can't seem to delete anything.  When I worked in the IM shop at LFAA er 5 Div, we ran a duplicate detector on the HQ shared drive.  There were more than 200k duplicate files.  Many of them had more than 3 or 4 duplicates of the same file.  Anything issued by the Comd usually had at least 10 or more duplicates as at least one person in each branch had a copy.


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## Fishbone Jones (18 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> Latest in our brilliant IT architecture: Personal Folders for Outlook will no longer be permitted on network drives - they'll have to be stored on local machines.  (Part of the Win 7 /Office 2k10 migration).  Your archives will no longer be accessible if you have to log on on a different computer.
> 
> Contracting the DWAN out to Google (Gmail, Google docs) begins to sound better and better...  >



To the Cloud!! ;D


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## FJAG (18 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> SharePoint successfully locks away information from users by imposing byzantine access rules; it's part and parcel of DND/CF's desire to classify and designate beyond reason.  Tools that lessen the ability to restrict information are needed; not tools that increase layers of access control.



That's not a SharePoint issue. SharePoint is highly configurable and can lock up or give liberal access to data depending on how the system owners want it. Trouble is that DND is generally a risk averse organization and tends to err on the side of hoarding data (usually under the guise of security or need to know [and I guess the Manning issue tends to reinforce that attitude]) rather than providing wide and liberal portal access to data.

Also don't blame IM for that. Data is owned by the users; IM generally implements data access rules to suit the users' statement of requirements.

On the USB issue. At JAG we created a Protected B network running through secured/encrypted channels across the unprotected DWAN. To access the system you need to insert a specialized USB key that that in itself is encrypted to Secret standards. (In effect if a key were to be lost the data would be inaccessible to whoever finds it.) While the key can be used as a secure data storage device, the real system intent is to have users keep all their data (including emails) in the JAG-wide back-end servers and to let each user access the servers in secure sessions from any DWAN workstation or laptop (even non JAG ones). The primary reason for that is we decided to break down all the old data silos and put all data into one system where it is accessible to everyone who is given access to it. SharePoint and RDIMS are both part of the system.


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## captloadie (18 Aug 2013)

While I was outcan, I learned that my French Airforce colleagues use only OpenOffice for their day to day work. The Germans were using Corel suites (Lotus, WP, etc.). The Czechs I believe used Gmail for their mail server.

So, there is a precedent for Governments to use non MS Office systems.


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## McG (19 Aug 2013)

dapaterson said:
			
		

> Latest in our brilliant IT architecture: Personal Folders for Outlook will no longer be permitted on network drives - they'll have to be stored on local machines.  (Part of the Win 7 /Office 2k10 migration).  Your archives will no longer be accessible if you have to log on on a different computer.


Email archive should be public record and subject to our information management (including retention) policies.  RDIMS (or a similar IM software) with Outlook interface can provide the email CR and greatly reduce the need for great big personal folders.


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## Duckman54 (19 Aug 2013)

...and not a word (thus far) about iOS?  Moved my whole household Mac years ago, and will never look back.  Worked with hard-core (and even some custom) UNIX stations at university.  Once I found out that Apple stuff was actually bullet-proof UNIX with a nicer user screen with pretty icons, that cinched the deal!

Plus the inherent architechture makes it a MUCH more secure platform.  I'm no CompSci guy or programmer, but I know the basics.  And I know that back in the days of the early 'Net, computers used to purposely advertise their existence on that 'Net.  More nodes = more powerful back then. Nowadays, it's just an invite for viruses and malware, hence large users (and small alike) spend large fortunes for Norton, McAffee, etc to protect themselves.   Think it's that Windows operates with Port 1026 default open (??  correct me), thus basically leaving the door 'open' to be discovered, take in data, etc.

Macs, by their very nature, operate with that port CLOSED by default, and only open it ever-so-briefly when actually transmitting, or EXPECTING a receipt of data.  Night and day more secure right at the bare-bones level.  Add wonderful operating software on top, and no surprise Mac users like me just don't get viruses and other crap.


Sounds like not such a bad idea for something (like DWAN) that we'd rather have a tad secure? And yes, back in the day there were compatibility issues... but no more. Heck, my iPhone can flawlessly open Word and Excel docs, and it sure-as-heck don't have Microsquash Office loaded onto it!  It just works nowadays.  My desktop can do anything MS Office can do, with their equivalents of Word, Excel and Powerpoint...  called Pages, Numbers, and Keynote respectively.  Comes FREE!

Then there are the dreaded Updates and Service Packs...  which add, and add, and add to an already HUGE operating system!  When Apple iOS updates, the operating system ALWAYS gets rid of the old code which was replaced, and as complex programming gets more efficient, the program often gets SMALLER as more updates are applied over the years!  THAT is why you'll see some people still running those late-90's IMacs that look like 'table-lamps with screens'. Challenge you to find a 10-12 year old PC in usable condition still doing anything productive.

And as for training/conversion?  All but the most advanced features are idiot-proof...  Thougthful and intelligent design up front makes for intuitive use. Even the most techno-phobic users have no problem wildly customizing their iPhones, do they not? iOS itself is pretty firmly locked. Home users cannot readily dig into the guts to alter functionality.  Perhaps thats why it WORKS?  But for large corporate/gov't users, Apple WILL make unique modifications to apply to that 'fleet', if required. OpenOffice, although cool, has no corporate support. You get what you pay for...  Anyone experience the 'Service' at a genuine Apple store?

Tech support and HelpDesks??  Put 3/4 of that workforce outta work overnight. I worked for big BC Gov't ministry, and compu-geeks here (the PROS) freely admit that. Save lotsa $$!  

Go into a random office and give all the staff Macs one day and YES, there will be some initial grumbling. But 4 weeks later try to switch back to Windows and you'll have a full-blown REVOLT!   

Yes, might be a small price premium up front, but with longer-lasting hardware, software, less frequent 'refresh' ocurring, less tech support and more productivity and security all along the way, sounds like it's worth looking into, at least.

Anyone have solid data as to why that WOULDN'T work?  ("smart" and "Gov't" in the same sentence argument notwithstanding)


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## FJAG (19 Aug 2013)

MCG said:
			
		

> Email archive should be public record and subject to our information management (including retention) policies.  RDIMS (or a similar IM software) with Outlook interface can provide the email CR and greatly reduce the need for great big personal folders.


 :goodpost:

This was one of our largest problems. Legal personnel were stationed all over the country and therefore their data drives and email folders were located on various disparate servers. Drills were to print off all documents and emails to be placed into paper files for retention (not always done) and all too often electronic folders and files would disappear on posting. All too often as well, incoming personnel would have only a fragment of the background info on a given file. (At the other end of the extreme, most files were never properly stripped and were stuffed with transient records that long ago should have been destroyed while many paper files should have long ago been dealt with [destroyed or transferred to Archives]). The problem is even worse in many other formations and units where properly trained and empowered records management staff do not exist. 

While there are better records management products than RDIMS, RDIMS is perfectly capable of adequate records and  information management (including records retention management).


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## Bzzliteyr (19 Aug 2013)

Being a MAC user at home has me very much agreeing with Duckman54.

"It just works".


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## PuckChaser (19 Aug 2013)

Bzzliteyr said:
			
		

> "It just works".



There's a reason Mac's aren't used on enterprise scale anymore, "it just works" also means "it does what Apple wants it to do, nothing more".


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## Inquisitor (21 Aug 2013)

Just saw an article that the German Government is warning users not to trust Windows 8. Seems that the "Trusted Computing" ummm "Feature" is the backdoor for NSA to get access. 

To add injury to injury it makes Billy G even richer. On a more positive note there was much speculation on the thread about the negative effects this will have on the US IT industry when they are perceived as corrupt. 0.

Oh well, just silly silly me, now that the Americans have been found out I'm sure their all very very sorry and will never ever ever do something similar again. 

I also believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.


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