Lawyer firm with close to 100 Clients.
One of our bigger customers had over 100 desktops, the server software was a mixture of Linux (OpenSUSE) and Windows 2003 server.
As a cost saving we suggested replacing their now unsupported windows XP to Linux. To replace all these PC with windows 7 was just not feasible and would involve a huge cost to company.
After investigation we found that most users had the following tasks.
- Merge Database information to MS-Word documents.
- Map & Address verification.
- Document scanning / Email attachment printing or saving.
- Working with an MS Windows based database fronted application.
- Connecting to their customers web application and retrieval of their data in CSV format.
Nearly all these task could be already done in Linux and we had to come up with solutions to the following:
MS Word document merging: Since MS word was not support by Linux for we has to convert all documents to Open Office (Libre Office), but for the additional cost saving of MS-Office licenses it was worth the small effort. Additionally we changed the Office merging and replaced it with a document mering solution done in the database.
MS-Windows Application: The Database Application that was used consisted of an single EXE, and we were confident that it might work under WINE. After some testing we were certain that it does work. Now after nearly 2 years of this company having converted nearly all their desktops to Linux we can confidently say that 100% of the functionality of this application works under WINE.