Office suite: choosing between Open Source and Proprietary
Many French companies spontaneously mention open source when it comes to upgrading their office environment. However, this is less the case in Anglo-Saxon countries. Many of them have taken the plunge, mainly thanks to LibreOffice, sometimes with a certain amount of regret... We're at the dawn of 2016 and a lot of new features have arrived. So it's time for a round-up of comparisons between office suites and the best free and proprietary productivity software.
Unified communication and collaboration
The big trend in office suites over the next 5 years is to offer collaboration (sharing documents and knowledge) and communication (email, chat, video-conferencing, etc.) functions in a single environment. This has the advantage of being able to intelligently manage the growing flow of information from heterogeneous sources (professional exchanges, notifications, newsletters, social networks, etc.).
In addition to the traditional functions of email, contacts, diaries and document creation , office suites are increasingly adopting :
- live collaboration on documents
- informal exchange spaces (intranet, groups, social networks)
- instant messaging, video-conferencing and screen sharing
- access on all media (mobile and tablet)
New practices are being put in place thanks to the modernity of these tools: emails are now being supplanted by chats for informal communication or document comments for team projects.
The new messaging systems also help you to cope with the ever-increasing number of incoming emails by sorting out the important ones (those intended for you personally) from the less important ones (emails addressed to a whole team) or even those that are not important at all, such as notifications or adverts. In a recent post, the Google Research Team even announced that automatic replies to emails were now possible on its Inbox application.
When should you consider open source?
Open Source solutions, even those of American origin, are most often made available to businesses by local hosting providers such as Ovea. Ovea offers its customers the Zimbra solution on its own latest-generation servers in the south of France. These hosts also offer services (support, training, maintenance) with the proximity and responsiveness you need. None of the market leaders in cloud office suites currently offer SMEs and VSEs the choice of hosting their data in France. This point is all the more important given that on 6 October this year the European Court of Justice put an end to the Safe Harbour agreement legalising the exchange of personal data between the United States and Europe.
Another important point is integration into your IT environment. Open Source software is by definition open, meaning that you can develop it further through specific developments. Many hosting providers are working to make these solutions more user-friendly, to add functions or to adapt them to your business. Openness also applies to your data: you can manipulate your data to find your diary or contacts in your CRM, for example. This use of data can be one-way or two-way, in the case of synchronisation with a third-party application.
Finally, if you are simply looking for a more open alternative to the market giants, Open Source will clearly offer you a credible solution with BlueMind or Zimbra.
But beware: price is not an argument against proprietary solutions. Open Source does not mean free. There is currently no link between the openness of an office suite and its price.
The advantages of proprietary software
The market giants do not have data hosting and openness on their side. However, they do have an irreplaceable advantage: direct contact with users. This confrontation without intermediaries drives them to continually optimise the user experience.
We spend as much time in our office chair as we do with our email and documents. Unified communication and collaboration tools are also at the heart of corporate information. That's why optimal user comfort is essential, which is less the case for business software.
On this point, Google with Google Apps for Work and Microsoft with Office 365 are far ahead of their Open Source competitors.
When it comes to compatibility, the American giants are still the winners. Half of all online office suites are shared between Google and Microsoft. According to Microsoft's latest quarterly report, 1 million new registrations are recorded every month. So there's a good chance that your document exchanges or video communications with external partners will be in a format that is fully compatible with Google Apps or Office 365.
The final major advantage is the performance of these solutions. With 13 data centres around the world (none in France), Google is able to offer huge storage capacity, a failure rate of less than 0.01% and excellent application speed. All at a very attractive price.
Today you have alternatives to the market leaders, with mature, credible solutions for businesses. These often offer more local and adaptable services, which are much appreciated by SMEs. Proprietary software, on the other hand, offers the best services in terms of ergonomics and compatibility, so you can be more productive every day. Feel free to compare them on Appvizer and share your experiences in the comments section.
Article translated from French