14 DAY TRIAL // It's not a secret that open-source software and Microsoft's own solutions are somewhat rivals and compete for pretty much the same users in some areas, and right now it's really hard to tell which one is actually more cost effective and helps you save money.
But as far as Italian city Pesaro is concerned, using software developed by Microsoft is a lot less expensive than going all-in on open source.
The story so far is as simple as it could be: the municipality of Pesaro decided to start using open-source software, such as OpenOffice, seeking reduced costs, and obviously, a freeware license is clearly more affordable than what Microsoft charges you for Office, for instance.
But after training 500 people to use open-source apps during a total of 4 years, the local authorities have come down to one painful decision: they go back to Microsoft Office.
The reason? Well, it turns out that the final cost of open-source software is actually bigger than what they'd normally have to pay for Microsoft solutions.
More than two times more expensive
According to a Netics research that Microsoft used to brag about this, the yearly cost per user when running open-source software is 530.38 Euros, while in the case of Office 365, this cost drops to 197.49 Euros. What's more, if communications and collaboration apps are purchased, the yearly spending drops to 111.98 Euros per user.
'So how is this possible?' you could ask. Basically, the final cost of open-source software involves not only licensing, but also employee training, as nobody used these apps before, IT experts for coping with all kinds of issues that might be experienced, developers for better compatibility with a number of internal apps, as well other deployment costs.
“We encountered several hurdles and dysfunctions around the use of specific features. What's more, due to the impossibility of replacing Access and partly Excel (various macros used on tens of files), we decided we had to keep a hybrid solution, using the two systems at the same time. This mix has been devastating,” the municipality's head of the statistics and information systems department, Stefano Bruscoli, said.
In this case, several hundred employees had to spend around 15 minutes every day just to fix document compatibility issues, which in the end translated to a huge drop in productivity.
The bottom line? The Italian city will now switch to Microsoft Office and think twice before going open-source again.