Ubuntu's Compatibility Issues

Dr. P.,

In accordance with our conversation regarding the adoption and implementation of Ubuntu I offer the following.  Ubuntu has become a viable competitor to our current Windows operating system.  Our firm owns 45 computers all of which are running on Windows and include the desktop applications offered by Microsoft Office.  Our current IT maintenance contract requires the replacement of 15 computers annually.  The cost for Microsoft Office and Windows are $185.00 and $99.00 respectively.  Each year we spend $4,260.00 (15 x $284.00) to purchase Windows and Microsoft Office.  Ubuntu is free and comes preloaded with LibreOffice a software bundle that offers applications which are very similar to Microsoft Office.  Ubuntu’s spreadsheet program and word processor are easy to use and closely resemble the current Microsoft applications we use.  Should we decide to switch to Ubuntu the similarities to Microsoft Office and ease of use would minimize the impact to our employee’s current productivity levels. The apparent cost benefit of switching to Ubuntu is $12,780.00 (45 computers x $284.00)

However, the cost savings noted above are offset by Ubuntu’s incompatibility with our current financial and project estimation software.  EarthWorks, our project estimation software, has been used by our estimating team for 15 years and is linked to our financial software such that the financial software uploads historical cost data into our estimating program perpetually refining our historical cost database.  Since 1999 we’ve invested $80,000.00 to purchase EarthWorks which includes the cost of additional user licenses and software upgrades.  In addition, we’ve spent $50,000.00 on training.  Our total EarthWorks investment of $130,000.00 has enabled our staff to generate estimates quickly and accurately as evidenced by our estimate to job conversion factor of 17%, which is 7% higher than the industry average of 10%.  By switching to Ubuntu we would realize a cost savings of $12,780.00 and loose our ability to utilize programs such as EarthWorks that are critical to the daily operation and sales of our organization.  The numbers speak for themselves we cannot afford to compromise the operation of our enterprise estimating software which generates eighty million dollars in annual sales to reduce our annual IT costs by $4,260.00.