[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

Sun Oct 3 08:33:01 CEST 2010

> 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
+
+