Let's all get blindsided together!
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@Carnival-Boy said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
I've never understood discussions on the price of e-mail. All offerings seem so trivially cheap to me. I mean in the US you're paying your employees, on average, over $50,000 per year and you're worried about an extra $50 a year for e-mail? We probably spend more on paper towels in the rest room than e-mail but I rarely see the president starting that discussion.
It certainly is about perspective. One of the things I like to bring up in meetings is how much is the meeting costing. When you have even as little as 5 people in the room, and the average salary is still a meager $50K, it's still costing $120+ an hour to be in the room. Increase this by 4 or 5 more people and add executive management and your talking $1000/hour just to talk about saving less than $5K/year.
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@pchiodo said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Carnival-Boy said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
I've never understood discussions on the price of e-mail. All offerings seem so trivially cheap to me. I mean in the US you're paying your employees, on average, over $50,000 per year and you're worried about an extra $50 a year for e-mail? We probably spend more on paper towels in the rest room than e-mail but I rarely see the president starting that discussion.
It certainly is about perspective. One of the things I like to bring up in meetings is how much is the meeting costing. When you have even as little as 5 people in the room, and the average salary is still a meager $50K, it's still costing $120+ an hour to be in the room. Increase this by 4 or 5 more people and add executive management and your talking $1000/hour just to talk about saving less than $5K/year.
I call this the "high cost of decision making". You have to account for the time to research the solutions, too. And the risk of the change. And the cost of making the change.
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@scottalanmiller said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@pchiodo said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Carnival-Boy said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
I've never understood discussions on the price of e-mail. All offerings seem so trivially cheap to me. I mean in the US you're paying your employees, on average, over $50,000 per year and you're worried about an extra $50 a year for e-mail? We probably spend more on paper towels in the rest room than e-mail but I rarely see the president starting that discussion.
It certainly is about perspective. One of the things I like to bring up in meetings is how much is the meeting costing. When you have even as little as 5 people in the room, and the average salary is still a meager $50K, it's still costing $120+ an hour to be in the room. Increase this by 4 or 5 more people and add executive management and your talking $1000/hour just to talk about saving less than $5K/year.
I call this the "high cost of decision making". You have to account for the time to research the solutions, too. And the risk of the change. And the cost of making the change.
Exactly. An email migration is going to cost well in excess of $5K when you take into account the tech time, the learning time, not to mention the lost productivity while everyone learns a new system.
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@pchiodo said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
Exactly. An email migration is going to cost well in excess of $5K when you take into account the tech time, the learning time, not to mention the lost productivity while everyone learns a new system.
I guess for SMBs migrations have a high cost but in large companies most of us are familiar with the majority of systems out their and can automate a migration in no time. granted when we move the cost could have been $5k in time. but that was for a lot of people. Like less than 10 cents a user.
The primary reason we migrate isn't overall IT costs of the system, it's operational cost. IE down time costs, user issues, business needs.
Now Microsoft office is something that's heavily scrutinized in our company, it's a very bloated system. We don't touch most of the features, and the update cycle makes o365 & SA not worth it. Word and Excel forumluas and macro's is what's used most in our company. We are stuck to it right now because we pay Microsoft to use some DLLs in our own applications (some excel stuff), along with paying Adobe to use some of theirs.
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If I ever move a business off of the Office suite I know that I will be shopping extensively for a training company. Training budget will probably exceed the cost of whatever email/office solution I go for.
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@MattSpeller said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
If I ever move a business off of the Office suite I know that I will be shopping extensively for a training company. Training budget will probably exceed the cost of whatever email/office solution I go for.
If they just use basic word processing features they want notice a difference hardly. It's when you get people doing macro's and forumla's that's the problem.
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@Jason said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@MattSpeller said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
If I ever move a business off of the Office suite I know that I will be shopping extensively for a training company. Training budget will probably exceed the cost of whatever email/office solution I go for.
If they just use basic word processing features they want notice a difference hardly. It's when you get people doing macro's and forumla's that's the problem.
The bigger issue from my perspective is formatting. I tried converting 7 years ago - formatting was what killed us. Could it have been overcome, sure. But management decided against it.
I find myself in this situation again. I want to move to O365, but SharePoint doesn't handle DOC, XLS - i.e. old versions well. Converting them in general will be simple - we barely use macros. Fun times ahead.
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@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
The bigger issue from my perspective is formatting. I tried converting 7 years ago - formatting was what killed us. Could it have been overcome, sure. But management decided against it.
DOCX XLSX are open standards and pretty much universal across office suites.
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@Jason said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
The bigger issue from my perspective is formatting. I tried converting 7 years ago - formatting was what killed us. Could it have been overcome, sure. But management decided against it.
DOCX XLSX are open standards and pretty much universal across office suites.
That's what I read about opening DOC and XLS files in OpenOffice 7 years ago yet the visual output was nearly useless requiring massive formatting updates.
I can only hope that once things are upgraded to the XML versions that these problems will be left behind.
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@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
That's what I read about opening DOC and XLS files in OpenOffice 7 years ago yet the visual output was nearly useless requiring massive formatting updates.
No it's not what you read. Doc and XLS was never an open standard. It was a closed specification. The OpenXML formats were designed from the ground up to be open.
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@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Jason said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
The bigger issue from my perspective is formatting. I tried converting 7 years ago - formatting was what killed us. Could it have been overcome, sure. But management decided against it.
DOCX XLSX are open standards and pretty much universal across office suites.
That's what I read about opening DOC and XLS files in OpenOffice 7 years ago yet the visual output was nearly useless requiring massive formatting updates.
I can only hope that once things are upgraded to the XML versions that these problems will be left behind.
Nope, doc and xls were a closed format. They didn't translate well because no one had access to the way Microsoft read those formats. Docx and xlsx are XML based and the standard is open. 7 years is a crazy long time in IT... I'm not saying it will be perfect but you will have better luck today then you did in the ancient history you are referring to.
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@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Jason said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
The bigger issue from my perspective is formatting. I tried converting 7 years ago - formatting was what killed us. Could it have been overcome, sure. But management decided against it.
DOCX XLSX are open standards and pretty much universal across office suites.
That's what I read about opening DOC and XLS files in OpenOffice 7 years ago yet the visual output was nearly useless requiring massive formatting updates.
I can only hope that once things are upgraded to the XML versions that these problems will be left behind.
Nope, doc and xls were a closed format. They didn't translate well because no one had access to the way Microsoft read those formats. Docx and xlsx are XML based and the standard is open. 7 years is a crazy long time in IT... I'm not saying it will be perfect but you will have better luck today then you did in the ancient history you are referring to.
OK I was over simplifying - what I recall was - oh you'll be fine opening DOC and XLX files in OpenOffice (it might have been the year LibreOffice started too) they'll look the same - clearly they were not.
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@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Jason said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
The bigger issue from my perspective is formatting. I tried converting 7 years ago - formatting was what killed us. Could it have been overcome, sure. But management decided against it.
DOCX XLSX are open standards and pretty much universal across office suites.
That's what I read about opening DOC and XLS files in OpenOffice 7 years ago yet the visual output was nearly useless requiring massive formatting updates.
I can only hope that once things are upgraded to the XML versions that these problems will be left behind.
Nope, doc and xls were a closed format. They didn't translate well because no one had access to the way Microsoft read those formats. Docx and xlsx are XML based and the standard is open. 7 years is a crazy long time in IT... I'm not saying it will be perfect but you will have better luck today then you did in the ancient history you are referring to.
OK I was over simplifying - what I recall was - oh you'll be fine opening DOC and XLX files in OpenOffice (it might have been the year LibreOffice started too) they'll look the same - clearly they were not.
Some basics were generally fine but the official word was that everything would be there but some of the formatting features were implemented differently in oOO and therefore were unsupported.
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@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
7 years is a crazy long time in IT... I'm not saying it will be perfect but you will have better luck today then you did in the ancient history you are referring to.
Are you saying that LibreOffice will read the closed format better now than back then? It might be true.
Considering my desire to move to O365 email for $4/month/user, paying $1 more for online access to Office/SharePoint/ODfB is cheap and allows us to use something closer to what people are used to - though it will require some retraining, just like anything does. I suppose the one major advantage that I have in converting everything to XML formats is I could use LibreOffice locally when absolutely required, and the web interface for the rest.
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@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Jason said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
The bigger issue from my perspective is formatting. I tried converting 7 years ago - formatting was what killed us. Could it have been overcome, sure. But management decided against it.
DOCX XLSX are open standards and pretty much universal across office suites.
That's what I read about opening DOC and XLS files in OpenOffice 7 years ago yet the visual output was nearly useless requiring massive formatting updates.
I can only hope that once things are upgraded to the XML versions that these problems will be left behind.
Nope, doc and xls were a closed format. They didn't translate well because no one had access to the way Microsoft read those formats. Docx and xlsx are XML based and the standard is open. 7 years is a crazy long time in IT... I'm not saying it will be perfect but you will have better luck today then you did in the ancient history you are referring to.
OK I was over simplifying - what I recall was - oh you'll be fine opening DOC and XLX files in OpenOffice (it might have been the year LibreOffice started too) they'll look the same - clearly they were not.
Some basics were generally fine but the official word was that everything would be there but some of the formatting features were implemented differently in oOO and therefore were unsupported.
LOL - it was well over 50% of our documents looked entirely different. It was considered a non starter. And considering things like O365, I'm kinda glad it was.
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@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
7 years is a crazy long time in IT... I'm not saying it will be perfect but you will have better luck today then you did in the ancient history you are referring to.
Are you saying that LibreOffice will read the closed format better now than back then? It might be true.
Considering my desire to move to O365 email for $4/month/user, paying $1 more for online access to Office/SharePoint/ODfB is cheap and allows us to use something closer to what people are used to - though it will require some retraining, just like anything does. I suppose the one major advantage that I have in converting everything to XML formats is I could use LibreOffice locally when absolutely required, and the web interface for the rest.
No, I'm saying it can read any new document made since the release of Office 2007. But I think you're right that going to o365 is a really good bet especially if you can push everyone to using office web apps.
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@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@coliver said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
7 years is a crazy long time in IT... I'm not saying it will be perfect but you will have better luck today then you did in the ancient history you are referring to.
Are you saying that LibreOffice will read the closed format better now than back then? It might be true.
Considering my desire to move to O365 email for $4/month/user, paying $1 more for online access to Office/SharePoint/ODfB is cheap and allows us to use something closer to what people are used to - though it will require some retraining, just like anything does. I suppose the one major advantage that I have in converting everything to XML formats is I could use LibreOffice locally when absolutely required, and the web interface for the rest.
No, I'm saying it can read any new document made since the release of Office 2007. But I think you're right that going to o365 is a really good bet especially if you can push everyone to using office web apps.
What do you mean it can read any document made since the release of Office 2007? Unless you're assuming that any document made since the release of Office 2007 was an XML based document?
If that's the case, then that doesn't apply to me. Because we had a smattering of many versions of Office until closer to 2011, I used GP to for all versions of Office to default save as the old doc format. Even after we were converted over to everyone being on Office 2010 or newer, I didn't remove that GP - forgot about it, until 2013. Now all new documents are created in the new format. Unfortunately, a significant number of our 'new' documents are made from old templates, or the previous year's document just with the data deleted, which causes most of them to still be in the old format.
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@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
I used GP to for all versions of Office to default save as the old doc format. Even after we were converted over to everyone being on Office 2010 or newer, I didn't remove that GP - forgot about it, until 2013. Now all new documents are created in the new format.
Why the heck would you force legacy formats when there were updates for all the older versions that came out when OpenXML came out for them to be able to support them as well.
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@Jason said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
@Dashrender said in Let's all get blindsided together!:
I used GP to for all versions of Office to default save as the old doc format. Even after we were converted over to everyone being on Office 2010 or newer, I didn't remove that GP - forgot about it, until 2013. Now all new documents are created in the new format.
Why the heck would you force legacy formats when there were updates for all the older versions that came out when OpenXML came out for them to be able to support them as well.
Because @Dashrender is an admitted masochist.
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It was a choice I made at the time - either manually deploy the update you're talking about, or use GP to do what I did.
Frankly your method didn't occur to me, in retrospect that way would have been more forward thinking, less legacy.
