Re: [edlug] RE: FOSS business models [was Big blue v Big poo]

["Gordon Guthrie" <gordon_guthrie@xxx.xxx.xxx>]

Robet (rjg) wrote:
> And how many of these business critical spreadsheets are returning correct 
> answers? There us a very long standing problem with the statistical 
> analysis functions in excel which MS made worse with their bugfix patches
>
> Any serious business user of excel would have a compeditive advantage by 
> using Gnumeric, which does everything excel does, does it more correctly 
> and has more useful features excel doesn't have.
>
> http://www.csdassn.org/software_reports.html
> for anyonw who wants more information

I agree (sort of, but...). I have come across some absolute howling 
spreadsheets in my time - poorly constructed, untested, unverifiable with 
deeply embedded erroneous assumptions in them. I do think that one day a 
major organisation will collapse becuase of poor reporting based on b*gg*r*d 
spreadsheets, but... of all classes of business user, Brother Finance is the 
only one with a clue about reproducability, reconciliation, verification and 
audit. And Brother Finance also tends to have invested hunnerds of money in 
his spreadsheet suites. Excel is also typically a front-end of choice for 
complex (and very expensive) analytical tools (for example the Essbase 
hypercube). Many large spreadsheet suites will be automatically fed with 
statistical information generated from batch reports, statistical packages 
like SAS, etc, etc. Ripping out that infastructure and replacing it does not 
come cheap - especially as a lot of those interfaces are implemented as 
bespoke Excel plug-ins.

Your reference paper was interesting (and not surprising) but doesnt make a 
convincing point for Gnumeric providing competitive advantage - unless your 
business has specific operational models that are dependent on those fscked 
functions.

Gordon

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