A Scottish police force returns to Office

The Central Scotland Police Force has jettisoned StarOffice and returned to Microsoft Office for 400 seats.

A few years back, they had migrated to StarOffice as a way of saving money, the primary argument of open source backers.

Unfortunately, as we see in our business everyday, the important questions were never probably asked. When the bottom line, and in a lot of cases, IT Guy’s current religious fervor is the mantra, problems loom.

The police force found out that ‘virtually compatible’ is not the same as compatible.

The cost savings? After the monies owed the consultants and support staff were added, there weren’t any.

Give them props for bailing out right away, and not waiting for either the ‘next’ release, or an open source fix that might never come.