Critical Success Factors for Migrating to OSS-on-the-Desktop: Common Themes across Three South African Case Studies

This paper investigates the critical success factors associated with the migration from proprietary desktop software to an open source software (OSS) desktop environment in a South African context. A comparative case study analysis approach was adopted whereby three organisations that have migrated to desktop OSS were analysed. For diversity, one case study each was drawn from government, private industry and the educational sector. Most of the findings agree with those in the available literature though there are notable differences in the relative importance of certain factors.