December 8, 2006 9:54AM  |
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Microsoft has been pushing hard to get the Open XML format approved as a standard, particularly in light of decisions by members of the Massachusetts legislature and foreign countries to migrate to the competing OpenDocument format — and away from Microsoft Office — as their de facto platform for text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents.
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 As expected, ECMA International has given the nod to Microsoft ‘s Open XML, effectively establishing the document format as a standard available to all. The global organization also put Open XML on the fast track for approval by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).Microsoft’s submission of Open XML to ECMA in November 2005 was backed by several companies, including Apple, Intel, Novell, and Toshiba. The Redmond-based software giant designed Open XML as a way to provide the vast number of Office customers with assurance that they can store and manage data for years to come without fear of putting all of their eggs in one proprietary basket. With a growing number of businesses and government agencies around the world interested in creating digital archives using open formats that are not bound to any particular vendor, Open XML will now meet that need as a standard that can be implemented across multiple applications and software platforms. Software vendors such as Novell and Corel already have announced their support for the Open XML standard.
Microsoft has been pushing hard to get the format approved as a standard, particularly in light of decisions by members of the Massachusetts legislature and foreign countries to migrate to the OpenDocument format — and away from Microsoft Office — as their de facto platform for text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents. The OpenDocument specification was developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and is native to OpenOffice.org and Sun’s StarOffice. With document-creating applications, companies and government agencies have few choices, which many analysts have identified as being a problem in the long term. In theory, international standards, such as those created by OASIS or ECMA, are more likely to be maintained and supported over the years without being radically altered. While Microsoft, as a company, likely won’t be going away any time soon, any document created according to a proprietary format — such as those made with Microsoft Word — have a chance, eventually, of being rendered obsolete as new software comes out, outmoding earlier applications. Software developers typically do not guarantee that they will continue to support their older formats forever. In contrast, a standard that is adopted by many vendors has a greater chance of being seen as a format that will stand the test of time for archival purposes.
“Today’s ECMA vote is a major milestone in furthering document interoperability; we believe customers will really appreciate the benefits that Open XML provides,” said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, in a statement. Leading up to the final approval, the ECMA made significant changes to the specification and also produced more than 6,000 pages of documentation to help developers get consistent results, whether they use a few specific features or the full technology set. Microsoft contends that the new standard will help technology providers and developers worldwide create applications and services that are more interoperable, and, as a result, documents and public records that will have better archival longevity. Open XML is the default document format for the recently released Office 2007 productivity suite. |
