Microsoft changes heart, gives market choice with openXML
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 17:29:00 01/23/2008
Filed Under: Technology (general), Software
MANILA, Philippines -- Software giant Microsoft Corp. said it is pushing the open Extensible Markup Language (openXML), a data format that is now integrated into its Office product, to offer the market a choice.
This appears to be a change of heart for a company that has been pushing its own standard for years.
OpenXML is a standard format that has replaced the old binary-based format used by Microsoft for its Office suite of applications like Word, Powerpoint and Excel, among others. Using the binary format, documents or files are coded to be read only by Microsoft Office applications. OpenXML, however, replaces this, and uses an open standard (XML) that can now be opened and manipulated by applications supporting the new format.
Vendors like Apple, Intel, Novell and Toshiba are now supporting this same open standard, which goes head-to-head with the open document format (ODF), which is also an XML-based format backed by companies like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Oracle and Adobe.
Microsoft executives stressed that “choice” is becoming a buzzword among governments, customers and the information technology industry.
Allowing the market to choose which standard to use promotes competition, innovation and a level playing field, said Tom Robertson, general manager of corporate interoperability and standards group at Microsoft.
Customers are increasingly demanding choice in solutions, vendors and business models, added Nicos Tsilas, senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft.
So why didn’t Microsoft adopt ODF despite the fact that it is already a global standard?
“Uniformity is not always a good thing,” said Tsilas. “At the end of the day, we should have a more dynamic market, and live in a world of ‘and,’ not ‘either/or.’”
Keeping openXML relevant in an evolving market is one of the challenges Microsoft has to face, said Robertson.
“We don’t think ODF is good enough for our users,” the Microsoft executive stressed.
ODF was ratified as a global standard format under the International Standards Organization (ISO).
ODF was a standard developed by the Open Office XML technical committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (Oasis) consortium. It was originally created and implemented by the OpenOffice.org.
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