You have been hired by a multinational professional services firm to propose an office productivity suite for their IT Sales and Sales Support groups. Here are the parameters:

1. The firm has offices in most major world cities (London, Paris, NYC, Cairo and so on) .
2. About 5000 employees will be using the application suite worldwide.
3. The suite should contain the basic applications: word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, and so on.
4. The firm is currently utilizing Microsoft Office 2010.
5. A focus should be on ease of deployment and maintenance.
6. The chief information officer is agreeable to open-source solutions if you can make the case.

Answer the following questions:

1. Define basic requirements for the system and identify three leading off-the-shelf office productivity suits that should be considered.
2. Compare and contrast the three proposed suites.
3. Explain your rationale for proposing either proprietary or open-source solutions.
4. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of merely upgrading to the newest version of Microsoft Office or migrating to a new platform.