Ministry eyes Sun suite

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

The Ministry of Social Development, one of the country's largest IT users with about 10,000 PCs, has evaluated Sun's free StarOffice application suite as a possible alternative to Microsoft's Office XP.

IT director Neil Miranda confirmed that the ministry, a key customer of both Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, had tested StarOffice version 5 about nine months ago "to see if it was a real alternative to the Microsoft product".

StarOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and graphics programs which are "lookalikes" of Microsoft's Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Draw packages. The Sun suite, which runs on Windows, Linux or Sun's Solaris operating systems, is available as a free download or on a CD-Rom with documentation for about $100.

Miranda said the ministry had decided not to switch to StarOffice last year but he had not ruled out such a move in the future. However, the ministry had since entered into a two-year licensing deal with Microsoft, so it would not be reconsidering Sun for at least nine months.

StarOffice version 5 attracted criticism over its poor interoperability with Microsoft Office files and because individual applications could not be installed separately. Sun says both these shortcomings have been corrected in StarOffice version 6, which is at beta teststage.

Sun spokeswoman Amanda McVitty said the final release of version 6 would be available in April or May. She said some local organisations had shown interest, especially since Microsoft had changed its licensing policies.

Last year Microsoft phased out its previous licensing options in favour of Software Assurance, which commits users to annual subscription contracts, but large organisations negotiate individual enterprise agreements.

StarOffice