BECTA Late than Never

BECTA, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, starts to get it:

UK schools should not upgrade to Microsoft's Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has said in a report on the software. It is also supporting use of the international standard ODF (Open Document Format) for storing files.

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"We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit," it said.

The cost of upgrading Britain's schools to Vista would be £175m, around a third of which would go to Microsoft, the agency said. The rest would go on deployment costs, testing and hardware upgrades, it said.

Even that sum would not be enough to purchase graphics cards capable of displaying Windows Aero Graphics, although that's no great loss because "there was no significant benefit to schools and colleges in running Aero," it said.

As for Office 2007, "there remains no compelling case for deployment," the agency said in its full report, published this week.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft reacts to this ever-so gentle kneeing in the digital groin.

Microsoft's "officelabs": Damp Squib in Waiting?

Given that her sources are normally impeccable, what Mary Jo Foley has heard about Microsoft's new "officelabs" is likely to be correct:

Tipsters say that Microsoft is encouraging the officelabs team to make use of open-source concepts in order to make better use of developers across different divisions within the company. Don't be limited by organizational hierarchy. Release fixes more quickly. Get new innovations into the hands of testers and users before they've been tested ad nauseum, to help build excitement for products — instead of waiting for orchestrated mega-launches like the Vista/Office 2007 one that finally happened at the end of January.

This is an inevitable development, for all the reasons I wittered on about before. You just can't write today's software - let alone tomorrow's - using yesterday's development methodologies.

But that doesn't mean that officelabs is the answer to Microsoft's prayers. Open source isn't just about getting "new innovations into the hands of testers and users before they've been tested ad nauseum" it's about engaging users - and giving, not selling, to them. In particular, you've got to give them the code.

There's money enough to be made from satisfying users' needs in ways other flogging software, but unless Microsoft learns to let go as well as to loosen up, I expect officelabs to be as much of a damp squib as its earlier pseudo-open source efforts like Shared Source.

Becta Late Than Never

I've been a bit remiss in not posting this earlier, but it's still worth underlining the major shift that's going on here, at all sorts of levels.

A while back, I was moaning about Becta not giving free software a chance in UK schools. Well, they've obviously been on holiday to Damascus, because in the recently-published interim report on Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, Becta seems to have seen the light:

The report found that whilst the new features of Vista add value, there are no “must have” features in the product that would justify early deployment in schools and colleges. The technical, financial and organisational challenges associated with early deployment currently make this a high risk strategy. Early deployment is therefore strongly recommended against.

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As the costs of deployment of Office 2007 would be significant, Becta has not identified any convincing justification for the early adoption of Office 2007. Recognising that many schools and colleges already have perfectly adequate office productivity solutions there would need to be a strong case to justify the necessary investment.

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The report compared Office 2007 with a range of competitor products and found that many of them delivered about 50% of the Office 2007 functionality, enough it is believed to meet or exceed basic office productivity requirements of many schools.

Becta therefore calls on the ICT industry to ensure that computers for the education marketplace are delivered with a choice of Office productivity suites available, which ideally should include an open-source offering.

The ability for schools to exercise choice is further restricted by interoperability difficulties and Becta is calling on Microsoft to improve its support for the ODF interoperability standard.

There is also concern that the current lack of support for Microsoft’s new file formats in competitor products (particularly “free to education” products) may exacerbate “digital divide” issues. Becta therefore advises that schools and colleges should only deploy Office 2007 when its interoperability with alternative products is satisfactory.

Definitely better late than never.

Microsoft: Yes, We're Really Scared

It is a truism that if you believe in your product you welcome comparisons with the competition. After all, if you really are the best, you can only gain from that fact being made manifest.

So this delightful tale from PC Pro suggests that even Microsoft has no faith in its own products:

There can be no doubt that Microsoft is afraid of the open-source movement. Last month, as part of the conditions for allowing us to include Office 2007 on the cover disc, Microsoft Corp - in many ways a company distinct from the far cuddlier and more approachable Microsoft UK - wouldn't allow us to put any open-source software onto the same disc.

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Microsoft specifically named OpenOffice.org as a program we couldn't include on the cover disc. That's an incredibly short-sighted move. The whole point about Office 2007 is what it offers over and above OpenOffice.org, that it allows you to create more sophisticated documents more quickly. If I was on the board of Microsoft Corp, I'd be demanding that magazines bundled both side by side so that people could make their own comparisons.

Obviously, the powers in Microsoft Towers aren't quite so confident of what the outcome might be. (Via SunMink.)

OOo or Aaargh!?

Here's a good analysis and general round-up of why Microsoft's decision to produce an extremely spiffy and completely different interface for Office 2007 was as bad a move as a very bad move can be. For me, the killer quote is:

OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office Currently Look More Similar Than Office 2003 and Office 2007
Training your users to go from Office 2003, or before, to OpenOffice.org, might be easier than teaching them the whole new Office 2007 system.

Just how easy is Microsoft trying to make the decision to jump to OpenOffice.org?