I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the +claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK +government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his +assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my +blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.
+ ++Hi. I just noted your +http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm +comment:
+ +"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even +with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the +savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the +Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take +it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust." ++ +I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is +the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007, +and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look +at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF +will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every +existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office +formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from +ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost +10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In +reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the +receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent +would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes +of wasted effort.
+ +Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to +transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10 +minutes converting to ODF. :)
+ +See +http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php +and +http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php +for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)
+
