Microsoft Office still Japan’s defacto standard suite
japan.internet.com reported on another small but interesting survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of office suites. this survey is timely with Nihon University recently announcing that from April 1st this year they would be using Google Apps, and Ashisuto have announced they are moving from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org.
Demographics
On the 17th of May 2007, 330 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s online monitor pool completed an internet-based private survey. All were employed in public or private industry, 73.6% were male, 13.3% in their twenties, 40.3% in their thirties, 34.2% in their forties, 9.7% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.
This result is not particularly surprising, given that other surveys have shown a virtual monopoly by Microsoft in the workplace for browsers and operating systems.
I personally haven’t used either OpenOffice.org or Google Apps, and work has corporate licences for Microsoft Office, and given the rather heavy reliance on PowerPoint (if I were in management here, I’d ban it) in particular, I cannot see any prospect of change. Interestingly, perhaps, a couple of months ago we gathered together money-saving tips, but no-one suggested using open source office applications to save on licensing. However, given that all other departments would be using Office, without 100% compatability we couldn’t change. In addition, many macro-filled Excel spreadsheets are used within the company, so I suspect they would not be usable in other spreadsheet tools.
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