Using Microsoft Windows is an agreement. It is an agreement between your company and Microsoft that you will pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars today, and hundreds of dollars next year, and so on for as long as you use Windows and other Microsoft products like Microsoft Office.

Linux on the other hand is a different beast altogether. First of all there are no licensing fees associated with Linux and Open Source software, and if you use a free flavour of Linux like Ubuntu, then there are no upgrading costs either. With Linux the majority of your costs are in making the initial switch from Windows to Linux and training your staff to use and administer Linux. The cost for doing these things can be well within the budget of your smallest businesses. Therefore, it does not make sense to not at least consider using Linux.

Etopian offers services to help businesses migrate from Windows to Linux. These services include basic consulting to talk about potential issues and concerns, planning services to help you plan the migration, and finally buying hardware to assist in the migration.

We offer consultation for only five cents, so if you want to talk to someone about Linux and Open Source software, we are the people to talk to, and it won't even cost you a dime!

Migration Process

Initial Consulting

Initial consulting is the first step to our process. We generally recommend all of our clients sit with us for a few hours and to generally get a feeling for migrating their environment over to Linux or whether they are instead interested in a mixed environment. Initial consulting only costs 5 cents! It only costs 5 cents because we really want to talk to you about your IT problems and find solutions that fit your budget. We often find that we help even clients who decide not go further with our company – so our clients win either way. In many cases they learn things about IT that they never knew before, which helps them do business better.

Migration Planning and Requirements Analysis

Each and every business is different in terms of the software that they use. Some businesses only use the basics such as word processing. Others use other commercial packages. Some even have their own custom software. In each of these cases we have solutions to address your situation.

Commercial Software

Many pieces of commercial software like Microsoft Office have open source equivalents like OpenOffice.org that allow users to perform the same functions.

Custom Software

For clients who have custom software, a few options exist. In some cases the custom software can be emulated directly in Linux. This is done without needing any Windows licenses. In more difficult situations it is possible to run Windows XP or Windows Vista within Linux using an virtualization environment like Virtual Box. In these
cases, our clients only have pay for a license of Windows XP, rather than a license for all the other software like Microsoft Office.

Implementation

Once we have planned exactly what we are going to do and you are happy with the plans and the costs associated with the migration we will begin implementation. The implementation step varies depending on the requirements. It may include purchasing new machines, install software, and could even include developing custom software – it
all depends on your specific needs.

Training

Etopian provides quality training for all of our solutions. We find that the level of training our clients require varies depending on the staff they have on-hand familiar with our solutions. Some companies have staff who are open source enthusiasts. As open source software is an integral part of our solutions, these companies can leverage their staff along with our trainers in training other employees, resulting in significant savings. Other companies need for us to provide the training and we are happy to be of service.

Our qualified trainers work with your employees in your offices to bring them up to snuff to their new digital environments. Our trainers are familiar with many commercial Windows software and have many tools at their disposal to help your employees figure out how to do any task that they did with their old software. In some cases, they even know of workarounds when you can't get the system to do exactly the way that you did it in Windows. If they don't know the answer, they will get your employees the answer, and that's a promise that we like to keep.

Costs of migration

The cost of migrations vary depending on the nature of your environment. For simple environments with only commercial software the costs can be as little as three thousand dollars – these are generally non-recurring costs as updating software is trivial and only investment is necessary in order to maintain the software. For more complex environments the costs can be higher, mainly depending on the amount of time that it takes to plan, implement, and train the staff. Please contact us for a quick consultation and we would be happy to provide a quote for specific situation.