YAFM – “Yet Another FOSS Migration” Story
Someday soon we’ll be bored with all these “company X is migrating to Linux” stories. But not yet!
Voicelink Communications, of South Carolina, has found Linux, OpenOffice, and Thunderbird to better suit their needs than their prior platform of all Microsoft applications. Without a formal dictum, they are nevertheless moving bit by bit to open source tools across the company. And it all started, essentially, by chance.
Peter Kaye of Linux.com writes,
“Lee says that “most of the software adoptions came about due to problems we encountered.” Unable to deal with the deluge of email-borne malware designed to take advantage of Outlook, and due to Lakos’ increasing concern with security, Mozilla Thunderbird replaced Outlook as the company’s default mail client. Lee notes that “at the time, I did not recall any major security advisories for Thunderbird, whilst I could reel off half a dozen for Outlook and Outlook Express.” Problems with Windows Software Activation prompted a switch to Ubuntu-based desktop machines; staff members have said that their old machines seem a little snappier under the new OS. Finally, with the move to Linux desktops, the company began using OpenOffice.org as the default office suite. The company now enjoys the benefits of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard internally. Lee says that cross-platform support for ODF was a significant draw for Voicelink and that some of their new customers are also using OpenOffice.org for similar reasons.”