creation and viewing of simple documents (memos, letters, spreadsheets) 

within the company only. The level of Windows interoperability required will 

depend on the number of Windows clients deployed in the organization. The 

applications create files in portable formats (PDF, RTF, and HTML). 

Examples of basic office clients would include a loans officer workstation or 

an office administrator in a small business.

General Office Workstation

A client designed to run a broad suite of applications, including business 

process applications (ERP/CRM GUIs), complex compound document 

creation (word processing, presentation graphics, and desktop publishing), 

and collaboration (instant messaging, file sharing, workflow, and advanced 

calendaring). The level of Windows interoperability required will depend on 

the number of Windows clients deployed in the organization. Browsing of 

intranet and Internet sites is required, with support for a broad range of 

multimedia (streaming audio and video, shockwave, etc.). Examples of an 

advanced office client would include workstations to support sales and 

technical professionals, finance planners, and executive assistants.

Planning tip: 

You should expect that migration of clients that fit into the more 

advanced functional segments as defined in the right side of Figure 4 6 on 

page 66 will require more intensive application and data migration steps. In 

considering the overall cost of migration, it may be appropriate to identify and 

migrate only those workstation segments that fit into the left hand side of this 

figure. As native Linux applications for the desktop mature and become more 

readily available, migration of the more advanced client functional segments, 

as shown in the right side of Figure 4 6 on page 66, should become more 

common.

4.4.4  Software solutions for Linux

There is growing ISV momentum around the Linux client, and the list of 

applications available on Linux is quickly growing every day.

Many software vendors now support Linux and are providing their applications 

natively under Linux, while others have adopted a Web based model and have 

moved their application suites to Java based implementations, which also make 

them run under Linux, assuming proprietary features such as ActiveX are not 

used.

More general use as well as industry specific software applications that run 

natively under Linux are being released every day. The  list  of applications 

available today is very long, and very dynamic. Therefore, we do not think it is 

 Chapter 4. Technical planning 

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