The upfront costs of migration (including retraining, coping with missing features, and solving a wide variety of little compatibility issues as they arise) wil

The upfront costs of migration (including retraining, coping with missing features, and solving a wide variety of little compatibility issues as they arise) will surely exceed what it would have cost the French Government to stay on Microsoft Office for one or two more waves of upgrades. The important question is: will the upfront cost and disruption be worth it? The data presented by the city of Munich six months ago provides compelling evidence that the answer is a resounding YES: the recurring savings from migration will exceed its upfront costs.[1] The city of Munich identified three types of cost savings: (1) it no longer has to pay for license upgrades, eliminating a significant recurring cost forever; (2) its desktop software and hardware no longer have to be updated as frequently, reducing another significant recurring cost forever; and (3) surprisingly, Munich claims its IT department is fielding fewer user complaints with free software, reducing another major cost forever. -- Edit: There's an additional benefit from migration not mentioned by Munich which I think will become very important over time. According to this article, the French government intends to reinvest "between 5 percent and 10 percent of the money they save" on contributing to the development of the applications they use, so they will have direct, hands-on input into which features get added to such applications and even how such features are implemented. The French government, in other words, will become a 'co-owner' of these Free Software applications, giving them more control over their own IT future. How much is that worth? -- [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3787539 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3787539