In our discussion of the Ubuntu operating system, I would like to refer back to our discussion of Google Drive. While it is important to save the company money, and Ubuntu is “free,” saving money may come at a higher cost through a need for a new IT infrastructure.
Although Ubuntu on the surface is free (i.e. no license fees), there is an annual service cost for professional use which I will touch on shortly. The first important thing to note is that we are leasing our laptops currently, and they come pre-installed with the latest version of Windows. Laptops are typically refreshed every three years and each computer has the most recent Windows operating system already pre-loaded. The cost for Windows is therefore irrelevant as it is not something that we are technically paying a separate fee for.
Moving away from the discussion of the operating system itself, Ubuntu runs LibreOffice as an alternative to the Microsoft Office Suite of products. Using the cost analysis of Microsoft from my earlier Google Drive report, the cost of MS Office 2010 professional for our department is roughly $262k ($349*750 employees). The last time we upgraded the Microsoft suite was 3 years ago, assuming we can annualize the $262k over 3 years – it comes to approximately $87k/year for our department. This cost savings would be offset by the cost of Ubuntu professional support services which run $165 per laptop or roughly $124k/year (750 employees * $165). This would be a net increase in costs of $37k annually.
On top of the $37k annual increase in costs, we should definitely factor in downtime for all associates as they attempt to navigate through and find what they are looking for in a new environment. While I found LibreOffice (which includes word processing, spreadsheet and presentation capabilities) fairly easy to navigate after just a short period of time, there are still many features that would take time before anyone would be at the same knowledge base as they are with Microsoft. It could take several months before employees are at efficient usage levels of these products.
Going back to my earlier statement about a new infrastructure; in order to implement Ubuntu in exchange for Windows and MS Office, we would need to hire consultants to work with us for integration with our existing systems and programs. In particular our trading systems and accounting systems to make sure everything can and will run smoothly. While I am sure there is a way for everything to work well together, it would require a significant upfront cost. My suggestion would be to work with Canonical as they are the leader of the Ubuntu project and in my opinion have the most knowledge of the system. We would need to get an official estimate from Canonical (and other possible vendors), but this could run the Company approximately $1-5MM depending on the length of time and the necessary requirements and changes to our IT infrastructure.
To sum it up, while Ubuntu and Libre offer an alternative to our current technology, I do not feel that the costs would be warranted given our systems are running smoothly in our current environment. Like Google Drive, Ubuntu seems free on the surface, but would take a significant amount of capital in order to implement.
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