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3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 To Oracle Open Office

This document outlines a 3-step process for migrating from Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office: Step 1 involves evaluating the business case, which is strengthened by Oracle Open Office's significant licensing cost savings compared to Microsoft Office. Step 2 is the software and document migration, which should begin with a pilot program before fully deploying Oracle Open Office and converting critical documents, templates, and macros. Step 3 is integration and maintenance, which includes options for email/calendar clients like Thunderbird, migrating databases using Oracle Open Office Base, and enabling editable document sharing between Oracle Open Office and Microsoft Office users.

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55 views6 pages

3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 To Oracle Open Office

This document outlines a 3-step process for migrating from Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office: Step 1 involves evaluating the business case, which is strengthened by Oracle Open Office's significant licensing cost savings compared to Microsoft Office. Step 2 is the software and document migration, which should begin with a pilot program before fully deploying Oracle Open Office and converting critical documents, templates, and macros. Step 3 is integration and maintenance, which includes options for email/calendar clients like Thunderbird, migrating databases using Oracle Open Office Base, and enabling editable document sharing between Oracle Open Office and Microsoft Office users.

Uploaded by

Johnny Wingman
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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An Oracle Whitepaper

January 2011

3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office


3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office

3-Step-Migration from MS Office to Oracle Open Office


This brief paper is designed to assist IT professionals and system integrators who want to
move an organization from Microsoft Office 97/2000/XP/2003 to Oracle Open Office. The
migration is a simple 3-step-process:
Step 1: Evaluation and Business Case
Step 2: Software and Data Migration
Step 3: Integration and Maintenance
There are some differences between these two office suites that may affect the way the two
products process and store information and data. However, the majority of functions are sim-
ilar making the switch to Oracle Open Office seamless to the majority of users.

Step 1: Evaluation and Business Case


Licensing costs of Microsoft Office are generally very high. Here Oracle Open Office
provides an important benefit as it has a huge licensing cost advantage. The cost of an Oracle
Open Office license is typically just 20% of a Microsoft Office license. The cost advantage
for Oracle Open Office can be even higher for users with more than one workstation or note-
book. Oracle Open Office licensing allows up to five Oracle Open Office installations per
user while Microsoft charges extra license fees for additional machines belonging to the same
user.

Licensing Costs Comparison


$600

$500

$400
Cost per License

$300

$200

$100

$0
1 100 500 1000 2000 3000 5000 10000
Number of Licenses

Oracle Open Of- Microsoft Office


fice 2010 Professional

1
3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office

There are many more benefits. Oracle Open Office stores all your data in an ISO standardized
OpenDocument (ODF) format and can also read and write files from Microsoft Office. The
document format topic is critical and is covered in the “Handling work flow critical docu-
ments, templates, and macros” section below.
Microsoft Office users can also easily read, edit and write files to ODF with the Oracle ODF
Plugin for Microsoft Office, which is available in the Oracle store.
The platform independent architecture of Oracle Open Office allows a smooth and easy trans-
ition to an non-Windows operating system. This opens up additional new cost saving oppor-
tunities.

Step 2: Software and Document Migration


An office suite is an integrated part of the company work flow and it is essential for the daily
business of most employees. It is important to plan and execute a migration carefully. The
following four steps provide guidelines on how best to start a migration. .

1. Implementing a Pilot phase


Oracle Open Office is, to a large extent, compatible with Microsoft Office, but it is a different
application and like Microsoft Office has its own strengths and drawbacks. The pilot phase
allows you to identify problems that could affect the migration process, as well as ensure that
the work flow and exchange of documents work as intended.
It is recommended to test Oracle Open Office in a pilot with voluntary participants. The parti-
cipants should be representative of the entire business work flow and they should be trained
or at least have access to trained colleagues.

2. Creating an inventory of tools and Microsoft Office dependent solutions


There are a number of CRM, ERP or other applications available which either depend on or
provide interfaces to Microsoft Office. These applications need to be identified and checked.
Questionnaires given to team leads or group managers can be used to get a better insight into
how the business solutions interact with Microsoft Office.

3. Handling work flow critical documents, templates and macros


Moving to a new productivity environment also provides an opportunity for some serious
“house cleaning.” Chances are that a good deal of the existing documents, templates, and
business applications in your organization are no longer in use, or will have outlived their
usefulness after your move to Oracle Open Office.
It is recommended to use the ISO standardized ODF file format as the default in your organiz-
ation. Oracle provides the Professional Analysis Wizard with Oracle Open Office 3.x to help
you create an inventory of existing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.

2
3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office

Microsoft Office Macros cannot be run directly or “as is” in Oracle Open Office because of
some fundamental programmatic differences in the object model for each product. Fortu-
nately the Oracle Open Office VBA Runtime Layer emulates the object model for a subset of
objects so some Microsoft Office macros can be converted to an Oracle Open Office macro
and then be used. Of course, your organization can create Oracle Open Office macros to in-
crease productivity and to streamline work flow.
The migration to Oracle Open Office provides an excellent opportunity to rethink your com-
pany's existing processes. For example, before you migrate any existing Visual Basic macros,
try to determine if the macros are still needed. You can then discard the macros that are no
longer useful. If you want, you can also re-engineer the remaining macros manually in Oracle
Open Office Basic. However, it is better to use web-based solutions which are much easier to
maintain and they provide better run-time security and error-handling than Visual Basic mac-
ros. There are a large number solutions and frameworks available.

4. Training and Support Options


To minimize support calls and maximize productivity from the start, you should also prepare
a “Welcome” package for users with supplementary information about the new desktop envir-
onment. The package should explain the basic functionality and functional differences of Or-
acle Open Office.
Oracle Premier Support provides essential support and product updates to help you get the
most of Oracle Open Office. .

Step 3: Integration and Maintenance


1. Email and Calendar Clients
The standard Oracle Open Office configuration consists of the core Oracle Open Office ap-
plications: Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw, and Math. Oracle Open Office also includes
Mozilla Thunderbird (most popular open source email client), with an extension for calendar-
ing, as an e-mail and calendaring client. It supports a number of Calendaring servers such as
Oracle Calendar Server or the Google Calendar but it currently does not support Microsoft
Exchange. The User CALs of Microsoft Exchange Server up to version 2003 include a Mi-
crosoft Outlook license . You can contact Microsoft and request an Outlook installation CD.
The Open Source project DavMail1 is also an option. DevMail provides an interface for Moz-
illa Thunderbird to communicate with a Microsoft Exchange server.
Generally, a migration of the email client is not required. The Oracle Open Office setup ap-
plication automatically recognizes your default e-mail client and no extra configuration is re-
quired.

1
DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/CalDav/LDAP Exchange Gateway (davmail.sourceforge.net)

3
3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office

2. Migrating Databases
Oracle Open Office Base is the database application for Oracle Open Office. Base provides
you with wizards to help you to create forms, reports, queries, and database tables so that you
can easily access your data from within Oracle Open Office. An Oracle Open Office Base file
stores the methods and layouts that you use to access a database.
Oracle Open Office Base can read and write data to the MySQL, Oracle, JDBC, ODBC, Mi-
crosoft Access, Text, dBASE, and ADO interfaces as well as spreadsheet data sources. The
Microsoft Access and ADO interfaces are only available under Windows.
Microsoft provides a free Microsoft Access 2007 / Microsoft Access 2010 Runtime which al-
lows a distribution of MS Access databases to users who have Oracle Open Office installed
on their computers. These users can add and edit data, but they cannot modify the MS Access
forms, reports, and queries.

3. Editable document sharing


In this scenario, recipients can edit the contents of the shared documents, for example to
provide feedback or to add more content before the documents are passed to a third party. You
cannot assume that a third-party recipient of a shared document has Oracle Open Office or
OpenOffice.org. Most likely, the common file format in a mixed Oracle Open Office and Mi-
crosoft Office environment is a Microsoft proprietary file format.
One approach is to make the ODF format the default format in your company. Standardiza-
tion makes it easier to exchange documents, track documents, and maintain the support infra-
structure. For this solution, Microsoft Office users would require a parallel installation of Or-
acle Open Office or the ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office.
Another approach is to distribute the shared documents in Microsoft Office format, especially
if only a small percentage of users work with Oracle Open Office in your company.
The following suggestions can also help you to improve interoperability in a mixed environ-
ment:
1. Make Oracle Open Office the default office application in groups where users closely col-
laborate, even if some of the group members are not part of your company. The ODF Plu-
gin for Microsoft Office enables these users to read and write ODF documents.
2. Introduce two main phases to contribute to a document, an edit phase and a collaboration
phase. In the edit phase, users create and save files as they normally would and store to
their local computer. In the collaboration phase, a single primary document is stored on a
central server and shared among users in a mixed office environment. For this phase, you
can use Microsoft Office format, but it is better to deploy the ODF Plugin for Microsoft
Office and use the ODF document format. Although conversion is used at the end of this
solution, loss of formatting caused by intensive “round-trips” during the editing phase are
avoided.

4
3-Step-Migration: Microsoft Office 2003 to Oracle Open Office

Summary
Migrating to Oracle Open Office is easily achievable with good planning, sufficient re-
sources, and skilled project management. The savings of moving to Oracle Open Office are
substantial, giving you up to an 80% reduction in licensing costs, no annual fees, and no con-
tractual obligations to purchase upgrades. That freedom and flexibility along with the cost
savings make it very worthwhile to start a pilot or evaluation of Oracle Open Office
Our consultants and sales representatives are very experienced in all aspects of Microsoft Of-
fice migration and can guide customers through the evaluation and migration process.
For more information about Oracle Open Office, visit oracle.com/office.

Documents
1. Oracle Open Office 3.3 Getting Started Guide.

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