The us government procurement weight of Microsoft Office file format to open
Microsoft Word, Excel announced on Monday and PowerPoint file format will be open standards, this would mean a file format standards war in recent days.
Microsoft says to the international standards organization (ISO) to Office Open XML file format technology to make the Microsoft Office technology in the next generation of Office software-Office 12 before release become international standards. In addition to outside of Microsoft, IBM and led by from a technical organization also pushed OASIS league Office application open file format (OpenDocument) become this kind of file international standard format. Companies such as IBM's efforts have received good effect and the United States announced after Massachusetts state government documents must use OpenDocument format, this means that Microsoft's Office and other patent software have wiped out.
With more and more government departments and agencies based on open standards required by the software, Microsoft is facing more and more pressure. Microsoft executives confirmation, Office file format become open standards help the company after dealing with government departments. Microsoft Office department general manager Alan Yates (Alan Yates) said: "with the government in the process of cooperation, we certainly there are some obstacles. Office file format become open standards help promote the government departments to Microsoft's long-term confidence, but also help Microsoft better cope with the challenge from OpenOffice strong."
So far, OpenDocument technology has acquired IBM and Sun microsystem, Novell, red hat, Google, apple and Intel and a number of major manufacturer support. OpenOffice. Org manager luis Suarez (Louis Suarez-Potts) said, ISO standards are not really open standards. He said: "although every company can browse the ISO standards, but can not use the standard to create your application. Any application can be used to open standards, but can only reference ISO standards."
The Microsoft decision from a side, reflect the company is facing huge pressure from the European Union. Yates said on Microsoft executives with European Union officials talks, Microsoft was asked to open up file format. Microsoft also plans to develop new tools to make old document also can make full use of the advantage of open standards brings. Yates said that Microsoft open Office file format will give the whole industry has brought more innovation opportunities. He said: "all types of developers can all benefit from the open format."
However, some in the industry for Microsoft still don't support OpenDocument apprehension. RedMonk senior analyst Stephen auger lai di (Stephen O 'Grady) said that Microsoft plans to Open Open XML format is a good thing, but the company to international standards organization submit your file format, but not to join OpenDocument and other format support is illogical. For example, Microsoft has announced it will in the Office 12 support Adobe PDF format of the company, but in the documents in the standard format and no joined to the PDF support.