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Another Italian City Says Goodbye To Microsoft Office, Will Switch To OpenOffice Soon
It seems Open Source adoption is the latest fad in European countries. Last month only we heard that Turin became the first Italian city to officially opt for Open Source product. Another city in north-west Italy, Udine, has also announced that it is ditching Microsoft office and will migrate to OpenOffice.
Udine has a population of 100,000 and the administration has around 900 computers which are running Microsoft Windows as their default productivity suite. As per the budget document, the migration will start somewhere around December with 80 new computers. It will be followed by the migration of older computers to OpenOffice.
The migration is estimated to save licensing fee which otherwise would have cost around Euro 400 per computer, which makes a total of Euro 360,000. But saving money is not the only goal of this migration, getting regular software update is also one of the factors.
Of course the transition from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice won’t be smooth. Keeping this in mind, the municipality is planning training sessions for at least first few employees who will get the new machines with OpenOffice.
As I stated earlier, this seems to be a trend in Europe. French city Toulouse saved a million euro with LibreOffice earlier this year along with Canary Islands in Spain. Neighboring Spanish city Geneva also showed sign of Open Source adoption. In other part of the world, government organizations in Tamil Nadu and Kerala provinces of India also ditched Microsoft for Open Source.
I think demise of Windows XP has been a boon for Open Source, along with sluggish economy. Whatever may be the reason, I am happy to see this list growing. What about you?