Early last year, my company made the announcement that everyone would be using Open Office instead of Microsoft Office. The announcement was made suddenly and the implementation came soon after. The people didn’t have time to digest the news, and before they knew it, they were using software that seemed alien to them. It’s been a year since the announcement was made, and many of the employees still continue to gripe about having to switch to open source.
I believe that the transition to open source software is something that a lot of businesses – especially small businesses – will have to make sooner or later. The advantages in terms of cost far outweigh the preference for the proprietary software that we’ve all gotten used to. However, this does not mean that things will be easy. Indeed, the opposite is probably true. Just taking a look at what happened – and is happening – in my company is enough to tell me that.
If you are a business owner and you are convinced that open source is the way to go, you also have to realize that the responsibility of making the transition as smooth as possible lies on your shoulders. Actually, this is the first step in making things easier. Once you have acknowledged that fact, then you can plan your moves more deliberately.
One thing that I cannot emphasize enough is for you to give your employees enough time to let the information sink in. Sudden changes are NOT good. More so, you have to make sure to point out the rationale behind the change. Get your employees convinced about this and you’ll be okay.
In the next post, let’s take a look at specific software that can help you cut costs but not sacrifice efficiency.
Originally posted on February 22, 2010 @ 2:56 pm