For the vast majority of users of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org 2.0 will do absolutely everything that they need. In addition, it does a number of highly useful things that MS-Office doesn’t (such as create pdfs). And, of course, it’s free. So why not change?

One of the messages that comes out of successful migration stories is that there are an awful lot of people out there who are not ‘natural’ computer users. Let me tell you a true story.

Many years ao, I remember standing for a long time in an ATM queue behind a lady who was trying unsuccessfully to get money out. She was blindly following instructions on a scrap of paper from her husband, which told her, step by step, which keys to press. Unfortunately she was trying to withdraw £30, and the ATM only had £20 notes. The ATM screen was telling her exactly what the problem was, but she wasn’t looking at the screen – she was just pressing the keys listed on the scrap of paper.

For this kind of user – and migration stories suggest their number is legion – any change in user interface is a major obstacle. The differences in look and feel between OpenOffice.org 2 and MS-Office are small, but they do provide a reason / excuse for potential users not to make the move.

So, we now turn to MS-Office 12 (aka MS-Office 2007). Industry watchers are mostly impressed by the “new and quite engaging interface”. However, that’s exactly what it is – an upgrade product with an entirely new interface. Why the change?

Microsoft aren’t stupid – they know that OpenOffice.org is a now viable alternative, but if they can swing the market across to a new interface they put us back into catch-up mode again, and buy another few years’ breathing space. They also have enough finance to sweeten the pill by providing a plethora of templates, wizards, etc to make the new package more acceptable. And of course there is a huge training and support industry out there looking to profit from helping users migrate.

But, at the end of the day, it is a significant gamble, and for OpenOffice.org, a big opportunity. Microsoft has had some pretty spectacular marketing failures in the past, but they have had the funding, the persistence, and the lack of effective competition to be able to recover. We need to ensure that OpenOffice.org supplies the effective competition this time round.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 7:12 am and is filed under OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.