Writer - a fully featured Word Processor able to read both .doc and the new .docx.

Calc - a spreadsheet program similar to Excel which can also create in PDF format.

Impress - a presentation program similar to PowerPoint which can also export to video format.

Base - a database program similar to Microsoft Access.

Draw - a vector drawing program.

Math - a tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor.

There is more software in OpenOffice.org that Microsoft Home and Student edition but there are a few packages that Microsoft Office has that OpenOffice.org does not have. The main component not included in OpenOffice.org when compared to the more expensive Microsoft Office editions is a PIM (Personal Information Manager) like Microsoft Outlook but there are many other PIM's that are free and open source including Mozilla Thunderbird. Often if your business or organisation is running a Microsoft Exchange Server then Microsoft Outlook licenses are included so no further licenses are required leaving you to use the office suite of choice.

The other two packages that are available in some of the more expensive Office packages are Publisher and Accounting Express. For Desktop Publishing there are free and open source equivalents including the very popular Scribus and for accounting software for small business there is also GNUcash

OpenOffice.org and all the alternative software listed above are cross platform meaning that as well as running on Windows they will run on Apple Mac (OSX) and Linux. This allows the ultimate flexibility for people to have the same user experience and to share files between the largest group of people in different situations. OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the first version that natively supports Mac OSX and including versions for Intel processors and PowerPC.

It is important for any office suite to be able to read and write in formats that can be easily shared and distributed. OpenOffice.org can read and write in many formats including Microsoft's .doc Word format, .xls Excel format and .ppt PowerPoint format. OpenOffice.org will also read  Microsoft's new docx., .xlsx and .pptx formats. OpenOffice.org has also for a long time been able to produce documents in a PDF format. The default format for OpenOffice.org is ODF (OpenDocument Format) each program has its own ODF format Writer has .odt. Calc has .ods etc. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Microsoft’s own office suite will support ODF. This means that an OpenOffice.org user will be able to exchange documents, edits and updates with a Microsoft Office user all using an open standard format, this really is a great step forward. Of course there are many other products that support ODF, not just the two mentioned, from web applications such as Google Docs and Zoho to office suites including IBM Lotus Symphony and WordPerfect Office.

Similar to Firefox, the very popular web browser, OpenOffice also has extensions allowing for the functionality to be extended in a specific way from 'Writer Tools' to 'Google Docs Integration'. One of the latest extensions allows importing and editing basic PDF document which can be very useful.

Like any change in software transferring office suite should be approached in a systematic way taking into account an organisations use of the software, its internal users and external users whether they are pure readers of the documents or require to interact. Many organisations will have large collections of documents in various formats and although OpenOffice.org has some of the best document support available an approach to document formats should be part of any organisations strategy. Outserve can help with all of these issues from assessing whether OpenOffice.org would be appropriate for your organisation to planning and managing the roll out.