Excel vs Opensource ? - Sonja van der Westhuizen

Excel vs Opensource ?

Published Saturday, September 20, 2008 1:34 PM

Good day guys,

I need to go off and google :P but I am hoping you guys can give me comments, issues, experiences.  I have the following scenario...

We distribute financial data around to users who has either office 2000 and office 2007 (the core financial team mostly). We primarily use excel with its pivot & coding functionality. Business doesnt want to pay the upgrade costs (to get everyone on 2007) and want to go open source.  The first thing that comes to mind is open office, however I dont know if it will provide me with all the functionality required. 

I'll also have to look at how we can develop on open office (where vba was used) and courses available since we will have to retrain the power users.

Another option is doing everything on the web, however sending 50000 records through would be a disaster of note. Ps.  The website needs to be mozilla 1.4.1 compliant too, so some of the snazzy web 2 stuff dont work so well on it.

So I am putting my thoughts here, while I am downloading open office....

by sonja
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Comments

# Zlatan said on Sunday, September 21, 2008 6:29 PM

Have you considered SharePoint with its Excel Services?

# sonja said on Sunday, September 21, 2008 8:41 PM

Hi Zlatan, I'll look into that one. That would be a much better option.

Seems like open office can do on paper what excel can do. Will start playing shortly...

:)

# ahmeds said on Monday, September 22, 2008 8:08 AM

Why not just keep the functionality based on Office 2000. Costs are always an interesting thing. They might save on purchase costs but they need to look at other costs. they need to have more a value discussion.

# sonja said on Monday, September 22, 2008 1:41 PM

I am happy with that... and yes, I agree with the rest... unfortunately the discision doesnt lie with me...

so for now, I have to put some options down...

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