Brazilian National OpenOffice.org Meeting (BrOffice.org)
The first national OpenOffice.org community meeting (“BrOffice.org”) was held in Brazil.
OpenOffice.org is becoming a juggernaut in Brazil. Perhaps it will be the first country where OOo gains majority marketshare?
Of particular interest are the success cases mentioned at the meeting:
“Three success cases in the migration to BrOffice.org illustrated the second part of the meeting. Banco do Brasil, Brazilian Army, and FIEC presented their migration cases detailing strategies and techniques used in the deployment of the software.
From Brasília, the senior analyst Dinis dos Santos presented Banco do Brasil’s case. Altogether, OpenOffice.org 2.0 was installed in all 4,000 branch offices, in the central management, and departments, adding up to 31 thousand workstations. According to Banco’s information, the savings were in the order of 7 million Reais.
Soon after, in Fortaleza, it was the Brazilian Army’s turn to present their case in the person of Major Alexandre. In the Army, migration was based on the strategical planning for Free Software in the Federal Government, from October, 2003. According do Major Alexandre’s presentation, BrOffice.org is perfectly adequate for organizations of any size. However, one of the decisive aspects for their success was the training of human resources.
Ending the presentation of cases, César Cals Neto, from FIEC, presented the institution’s case of success, showing that over 80% of the 1000 workstation network already uses BrOffice.org. The project used São Paulo’s Subway’s Authority’s experience as reference for their Free Software Migration.”