[Fsfe-uk] Free software support services in the UK

[Tom Chance]

Ahoy,

Part of my job at a small-ish (~40 people) sustainability charity involves 
managing the IT side of things. We have an outside company who provide a 
comprehensive support package on contract, with on-site support as well as 
telephone/email, and bags of useful assistance when purchasing new software and 
hardware. In fact, if we wanted my job could pretty much just be liasing with 
them.

Unfortunately we're a Windows-based outfit, and although everyone uses Firefox, 
PDFCreator and a few other "low hanging fruit" items it's impossible for me to 
migrate us to OpenOffice.org on Windows, Linux/BSD/Solaris on the server and 
indeed the full package with Linux desktops. In my dreams it would all be run 
off two servers with thin clients, sigh. I can't responsibly advocate such a 
switch because I can't find any companies who provide the kind of support we 
currently enjoy for free software. I summarised these frustrations late last 
year here: http://tom.acrewoods.net/node/497

Does anyone know of companies that I've missed, who fit the bill described in 
that blog entry?

Anything from one-off support for migrations from MS Office to OpenOffice.org, 
to the full package, is of interest to me at the moment. I'm looking into this 
both for my job, and because I'm interested in writing it all up into an 
article if I get the time.

Any research into the availability of people with my skills in managing free 
software systems would also be useful. Another reason I can't install too much 
free software, or get us a nice VM/dedicated server for our web sites, is the 
nightmare scenario of me leaving the organisation and them struggling to find 
someone with comparable skills who also does government policy work!

Kind regards,
Tom