Apache OpenOffice vs Microsoft Visio

• The best thing that OpenOffice does is being free. The cost of Microsoft Office is high and smaller shops can't afford it.
• OpenOffice has similar features with Microsoft Office and that is a lot, given that the Office team at Microsoft is huge and this product goes through all cycles of marketing, product planning&requirements, development, testing, rollout, and production maintenance.
• In terms of performance, I have seen OpenOffice run as well as or even better than Microsoft Office.
• It is cross-platform, one of the key strengths of OpenOffice.
• Provides compatibility of the generated files with Microsoft Office - this will make the transition to OpenOffice for any company smoother.

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• I love that Visio works for any level of user. I can create simplistic, high-level diagrams very quickly, or take my time and create more complex processes and diagrams using Visio's large shapes library. And if the icon or image I need isn't available, I can paste or import it into my diagram.
• It gives me control to go outside what we'd consider best practices to create diagrams that have specific meaning to stakeholders. For example, some may like a particular color scheme, which I really don't care about, but if they want decisions to be yellow, start to be green, and end to be red, I can easily accommodate those requests.
• I also love (love!) that it is so easy to use with SharePoint. I can virtually collaborate with my team to refine process flows and diagrams, and go back through my version control to see which changes have been made and by whom.

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• Some people are legitimately not interested in using software outside of the Microsoft Office Suite or Google Drive, so this could be a hard sell for small-mid-sized businesses.

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• The shapes library can be a little daunting if you're unfamiliar. Unless you know what you're looking for and where to find it, you can spend a lot of time looking for a particular shape or icon. But once you find it, you can add it to your shapes menu for easy access.
• You can also spend a lot of time selecting your defaults for shapes, arrows, font size, etc. But like the shapes library, once you get it down, it's locked in.
• Be prepared to spend a few hours playing with Visio before figuring out all the nuances. But if you're a beginner and need to create a process flow or diagram, you can do it very quickly without a lot of effort or training. The fun stuff takes a little longer to master.

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• The initial cost in terms of price and time value of setup was negligible: immediate benefits.
• High compatibility means less troubleshooting and conversion is required, saving time.
• Weak macro support means that occasionally you will be required to use another suite.

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• Visio has been part of the software used in IT for as long as I have been here. I can't really comment on the ROI but I can say that doing without it would greatly affect both the delivery time and quality of our technical documentation.
• Visio as a perpetual licence will absolutely have a positive impact on a company. If the cost structure goes towards a pay to use model (like for Office) then it's worth doing the actual math. It is possible that an alternative should be considered.

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