Mixing Office Suite and Viewers on remote server

unclepablo · 30 Mar 2010 at 17:14

Hi - I've just been brought into a consultancy role with a customer that has just under 100 users, all running remotely via thin-client.

I believe they just have a single Office 2003 licence for all of the users(!) - so, we're looking to tidy it up.

Most of the end-users (80 odd) only need to view and print Word/Excel documents with the other 20 needing editing functionality.

To buy 100 odd Office licences (OLP) is a pretty tidy sum.

So the question is: Is there anyway of installing the free Word/Excel viewer application but also install Office 2007 on the server - but limiting who gets what.

Perhaps you could leave the file association of xlsx/docx with the viewer and if you wanted to edit the documents manually open the respective program? Although this doesn't limit what user can assess the full suite.

Any thoughts welcome please. Cheers

unclepablo · 30 Mar 2010 at 17:58

Thanks Walnuts - that certainly answers several of them and backs up what I thought.

Not many of the desktops have a licence of Office so that's a no go but I'll check out AppSense, although I'm not sure if this will work with the vWorkspace product they are using?

I'd like to hear of any real-life situations that have been solving using this or any other methods

unclepablo · 31 Mar 2010 at 16:48

Well, they've got three servers load balancing so I'm not sure it's going to be that easy - but thanks for the suggestion.

unclepablo · 1 Apr 2010 at 09:05

Thanks for the info. I'll have a look for the previous thread to see if it sheds anymore light. It's just trying to only buy the "full" versions if needed.

Iand - Trying to avoid spending 24K (£300x80) on office licences that aren't needed is hardly "*****" - especially in this ecomonic climate!

unclepablo · 1 Apr 2010 at 11:29

iaind said:
I'm just trying to work out what sort of business with that many staff is formed in the first place without putting the basic IT infrastructure in place in the first place.

Really? I don't think think IT being an after thought is uncommon at all with the SME business I've worked with. Maybe, I've just been unlucky

Seriously though, I appreciate your input.

iaind said:
FWIW, it's unlikely to be anything like 300 per license if you shop around and look at the various licensing programs on offer

I wish I could find a better price! Office seems to be expensive - this is looking at the OLP licence for Office Standard 2007.

If anyone's interested, I've found the following article which answers what I was originally trying to achieve:-
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/br...ons-to-support-side-by-side-applications.aspx

Thanks all.