[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[Marc Paré]

> Targeting the school boards makes a lot of sense.
> Note that Openoffice targeted various gov't organisations in France,
> some of which ended up migrating to Mandriva as well. Maybe that could
> work with school boards as well. I'm tempted to try something like that
> with mine, in banlieue of Montréal.
> Just out of curiosity, what is your school board ?
>
> For the server, if Mandriva management were a little more reasonable, it
> would be good to partner with them. (I'd like to see something like
> RedHat/Fedora.)
> In any case, you can't go wrong with RedHat.
>
> André (andre999)
>

Bonjour André:

As an example, the official word from the Ontario Ministry of Education 
is that if users cannot afford the use of MSOffice, that we are allowed 
to promote the use of StarOffice. Here is the official link: 
http://www.osapac.org/db/view_software.php?id=310  Sun had made 
arrangements to provide support through their 1-800 ... telephone 
service (unofficially, they had also said that they would have supported 
OpenOffice user queries as well, although this policy may have changed 
after this policy had been posted on the net). There are over 2 million 
students being taught in Ontario where I teach. Quite a good market to 
target. You can find the statistics on registered school student numbers 
here: http://www42.statcan.ca/smr08/2007/smr08_088_2007-eng.htm

If we were to commit to an "Education based" install (this could be done 
at the point of installation where you could tag the type of distro that 
you would want installed) with SOLID alternatives for the most common 
software packages used in educational institutions, then we could make a 
convincing case for the installation of Mageia desktops in schools. Most 
governmental agencies today are sensitive to ways of cutting down on 
expenses.

The only problem that I would see in doing such a promotion is that this 
type of usage would require a server/client solution. This is where the 
choice of server partnership would become important. RehHat and Suse are 
well-known servers options in the business world. We could then partner 
up with them and make sure that Mageia/RedHat or Mageia/Suse solutions 
are rock solid. Unless we seek a partnership with MandrivaLinux server, 
but in North American markets, Mandriva is really not a force to contend 
with and is not really known.

Marc