While at Getty Images, my team and I began to discuss ideas for how to eliminate and/or reduce our ongoing "fixed" costs.
First off, it's my opinion that there are few if any truly fixed costs in IT. There are many that are more or less semi-variable but few that are really fixed.
That aside, one of the places to we felt we could find savings was in the annual software license bucket. We began to think about how we could get out from under the Microsoft Office tax. Could we stop paying Software Assurance? What about maintenance of any kind? Once that stream of payments commences I don't many, if any, organizations who've stopped it.
Of late, I've been using NeoOffice 2.1 (yes, I'm a Mac user again, having begun with the first Mac and Apple IIe way back when). It does everything I need. I dutifully sent in a small donation and I'm never going back.
So why not the typical organization?
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
About Me
- Patrick Flynn
- I've been in a variety of roles within technology for about 25 years including 10+ in the CIO/CTO chair. Published author - of sorts. See posting for July 22, 2007. For all the detailed CV kind of information click on my LinkedIn profile in the Links section of this blog.
6 comments:
Delighted & Surprised to read an IT guy embraces MAC. About 2 years ago, I made the switch when I left my day job to co-found a corporate training company with my husband. The simple tools on Mac have helped me build a business including a beautiful website, proposals and powerpoints without a background in design or any real tech training. It lets me focus on the business of building our business.
I'm a pragmatist when it comes to picking technology. I care little about what's on the label and more about what's in the box and what it can do for my clients.
My experience with Mac's goes all the way back to the first Mac plus Lisa (remember that one?). While no tool is perfect for all uses, the more I use the Intel-based Mac's plus Parallels the more I find it can do.
As with you, I spend less time thinking about the tool itself than about what I can do with it.
I believe it's all going to start at home. As the big PC vendors start shipping hardware with an OS other than Windows and the popularity of AAPL grows, you’re going to see a shift in the "comfort" level with Microsoft alternatives like OpenOffice and NeoOffice. And then you have google...... Once this happens, the culture will change starting at home with our kids.
Besides, who wants to spend $300+ for a copy of Office at home if you don’t have to. I know there’s the student version for ~ $100.00 however…
Microsoft is aware of this which is why they are giving away Office Pro. to company employees who have ELA’s for just $20. Get it into the homes so the kids get familiar with it. Plus Microsoft appears to be responding by putting hooks from its office products into all their other business productions like Sharepoint, Groove, Exchange, Service Manager (New ticket system), etc… Microsoft wants to make it as painful as possible to “stray” from the core product line.
Thanks for the thoughtful post!
Certainly for the college and high school student, a Mac if both easy-to-use alternative and fashion statement. That's going to lead to long-term change in employee expectations and comfort.
The key over the long haul will be the degree to which line of business apps move from Windows and PC centricity to network-based applications.
What did I tell you :)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080219/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_dreamspark
That didn't take long.
The question is whether it will be too little, too late.
Post a Comment