It's great to see the adoption of Open XML accelerating. The Compatibility Pack for Open XML has been downloaded more than 70 million times*. Countless large organizations have taken that single download and deployed that across their organizations. These numbers continue to improve in favor of Open XML.

There are a number of tools available for manipulating, processing, scanning or otherwise handling Open XML documents. As I read the forums on OpenXMLDeveloper.org, I think I can be of service by providing a list of the tools that I know about today. There may be others, but this will help folks get started who might be looking for an entry point:

You don't have to look hard to see the impact that Office 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 (aka MOSS) are having. A very real impact that 2007 is having is with Office Business Applications (http://www.microsoft.com/oba). With OBA's, customers have the ability to connect Office to Line of Business applications, providing end users with an experience that is both familiar and easy-to-use, while providing the folks who run the data center a path to the desktop that is both sustainable over the long term, and instantly impactful to a users' environment.

This is a concept that we refer to in Office as the merging of structured and unstructured collaboration – something that Office does particularly well. Where real-world business process management is a combination of formal steps and human interaction, Office is the best place to surface those applications and tools because it is a familiar, convenient and accessible entry point for everyday workers.

Slipping quietly under the radar was the recent introduction of the tool from OpenText that helps integrate PeopleSoft with Office client and SharePoint Server for recruiting management. This is an example of some of the things that OpenText has been doing to integrate across various Office products to solve for business scenarios.

To see a Flash-based demo, visit here: http://mimage.opentext.com/alt_content/binary/demo/recruitingmanagement/index.htm

Here are some relevant bits from the press release:

"The new solution highlights Open Text's unique approach to Microsoft SharePoint. Rather than competing with SharePoint, Open Text is creating specialized ECM applications designed to run natively on top of SharePoint. Last year, Open Text introduced a case management framework (www.opentext.com/2/global/press-release-details.html?id=2004) which lets developers easily create functional extensions to SharePoint. Open Text uses the framework to create a series of ECM applications for SharePoint, including Open Text Legal Information Management (www.opentext.com/2/global/press-release-details.html?id=1997), a specialized ECM application for law firms, and now the new recruiting solution announced today.

Open Text Recruiting Management for Microsoft SharePoint utilizes familiar and user-friendly Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 environments to facilitate the tasks related to the recruitment process within one application, allowing everyone in the recruiting hierarchy to participate in the process without the need to be trained on such HR systems as PeopleSoft. The application also takes advantage of Open Text Enterprise Connect (www.opentext.com/news/pr.html?id=1949), which lets users access and interact with their business content, applications, and processes from within their familiar desktop applications.

A dashboard is conveniently accessible from Office Outlook 2007, or directly within Office SharePoint Server 2007, making it easy for hiring managers to instantly request a new hire by completing a simple web form. Once a job offer is extended, the Open Text application archives the job site with other information for long-term audit and retention, and automatically replaces the non-hired candidates into the central applicant pool to be accessed for future recruiting.

Features for Open Text Recruiting Management for Microsoft SharePoint include:

• Integration with Oracle s PeopleSoft Enterprise: Open Text Recruiting Management for Microsoft SharePoint automatically imports relevant HR data from PeopleSoft. Consistency of PeopleSoft usage is maintained through presentation and data exchange from SharePoint without needing to access the PeopleSoft user interface directly.
• Full Auditing Capabilities and Records Retention: Built upon the compliance strengths of long term retention and archival of Open Text Enterprise Library Services, the application shares central records management practices and maintains compliance with corporate and legislative regulations.
• Automated Workflow and Approval: Open Text Recruiting Management for Microsoft SharePoint leverages request forms, automated tasks and notifications to simplify the hiring process.
• Dedicated Collaborative Work Area:Information related to the job is available within the Office SharePoint Server 2007 site. Users work with everyone involved in the hiring process and take advantage of the collaborative features of Office SharePoint Server 2007. "

Dealing with Product Management for both IT Professionals and Developers for Office requires a lot of brain food. I have to do a lot of reading to keep current on the interop discussion, the state of app virtualization, developer tools, solution profiles, etc. I read a lot of trade press and blogs, mining for the nuggets that are useable.

There are two blogs I read and would like to share for the folks that read what I have to say. The Interoperability@Microsoft blog is a good place to learn about the activities we're investing across the company. Particularly for the folks who are a little skeptical about the breadth and depth of activity that we're driving, it's a good view of how much we're doing. (http://blogs.msdn.com/interoperability)

The other is Office Labs. I point this out here to stretch the fabric a bit for folks who live in the world of standards & interop. If you know a little about Office, you'll know that we've been at the business productivity game for 20 years or so, and have contributed a little bit to the way that people work. The number of products that choose "Times New Roman" as their default font "Because Word does" is a great example of how deep the impact is and continues to be. Office Labs is at the leading edge of innovation for some areas of the product. I keep an eye out for what these folks are up to. (http://www.officelabs.com/Pages/Blog.aspx)

One could presumably begin every sentence with the phrase "in this economy…" It seems like more than any other thing, a budget crunch forces us to ask some tough questions about the work we're doing, check to see if we're going to get the results we thought we were, or if we did 50% less we'd get 80% of the result we'd hoped for.

A question that I am frequently pressed to answer is whether or not an organization should choose to deploy Office 2007 today or to wait for the eventual release of Office 14. It's a fair question, although I think that in most cases it is more frequently asked to test whether or not an organization will save money by standing pat or by moving forward. I think what people are really asking with the Office 14 question is "do I save more money if I deploy now or if I do nothing?" – a fair question, and one that I'd like to take a minute to answer here.

"Deploy now" is the answer. Getting users to Office 2007 will result in benefits that directly relate to cost reduction. There are a lot of ways to describe why, but for a minute let me discuss IT-related benefits specifically.

Off the top of my head, here are a few very good reasons why 2007 will save you money from day 1:

• Security updates. 73% of all security vulnerabilities reported for Office do not apply to 2007, due to the significant investment in app-level and document security in the products. This means that you are updating the desktop less frequently than before, and your users are operating in a much more secure environment.
  
  
• Saving on storage and bandwidth. A lot of folks correctly attribute this savings to the fact that DOCX, .DOCM, .XLSX, .XLSM, .XLSB are dramatically smaller than .DOC and .XLS. This is a very real data point… resulting in as much as a 50% reduction in document size and bandwidth consumption. But when you fold Groove into the mix, where workspaces only synchronize the bits of a document that have been changed, we multiply the effect significantly. Layer in the ability to take SharePoint libraries offline with Outlook, and complete control of the file save location dialog box, and you have the makings of a solution where you are deferring the storage of smaller documents to shared locations. Organizations can take this as far as they choose; they can manage this as much as is necessary; there are virtually no limits for managing the software.
  
  
• Trust Center. There are a lot of features in 2007 to guide users down a good decision-making path. None may be more important, however, than the new Trust Center. Illustrating the benefit is best done by comparison to Office 2003. In 2003 if you open a document that contains a Macro, users are forced to decide whether or not to enable that Macro before they see the document contents. In security language, they are forced to make "the trust decision" before they understand whether or not they need to use the macro. In 2007, the Trust Center and other functionality changes this behavior. In 2007 users can open a document before electing whether or not to execute a Macro. They can "make the trust decision" with a lot more data. There is an obvious benefit of user safety that comes into play. But from a support standpoint, a measurable support burden reduction can be observed in the elimination of phone calls to the help desk that begin with "Office won't let me open this file because it says it has a Macro."
  
  
• App-Virtualization. Increasingly organizations are turning to Application Virtualization as a solution for desktop application management – and for good reason. Customers today are seeing significant benefits for managing Office in a virtualized state. Isolating the app from the OS has an enormous impact on application compatibility.
  
  
• Outlook auto-account configuration. Imagine if all your users needed to do was type their own email address and password to configure Outlook. Now imagine if your Mobile device would do that too… between Exchange and Outlook and Outlook Mobile, IT can enable Outlook to configure itself when new users are connected to the system or machines are migrated.
  

As instant feedback, all of these things translate into reduced management cost for IT. I haven't really begun to discuss the concept of productivity gain and how much more efficient users are with 2007 than prior releases; the idea that users are now experiencing 12 times more functionality in PowerPoint 2007 than they did in 2003. Or the value that consolidating business applications through the Office user interface is bringing. Products like Duet deliver a great shortcut to ROI on line of business applications.

As IT organizations look for ways to contribute to their organization's value, and to help reduce operational costs, make people more efficient, etc., they need look no further than the software that is right in front of them. People all over the world are realizing benefit with 2007. Now is the time to take advantage of its advances.

Winding down the year causes a variety of reactions from people. Some (like me) have a mild panic when they realize another year has ticked by on the calendar, wondering how they managed to fill all that time between the things they didn't do this year. Realizing that they must have had a birthday at some point in the past 12 months, some take a moment to do the math to figure out their age. After I passed 33, I needed to calculate to remember. My age fell off the stack of numbers that I cite frequently for some reason.

I'll go quickly through the part where I refer back to my "what does 2008 look like?" post and I'll refrain from describing myself as a visionary, there are plenty of people for that. (Although sadly, most of those folks are paid to write things for a living rather than invent technology)

But to recap that post:

2008 also represented a transition for me in terms of focus. Where I was primarily focused on Open XML, I have now transitioned to managing the Office Business Applications program. Office as a front end to line-of-business solutions is a very compelling value proposition, and one which we are uniquely suited to address. The traction and mindshare we have around this program is incredible. For Developers, it means building applications that are instantly familiar. For solution providers, it means building applications that get baked into the core IT infrastructure. For LOB managers and folks making deployment decisions, leveraging Office as a solution front-end means a dramatic reduction in training cost and deployment time… goodness all the way around. Open XML is a key technology in enabling a successful OBA, and investments like the Open XML SDK are providing great benefit for folks who want better access to the document formats.

And some fun… I don't spend a ton of time on my blog traffic, but I do try to keep up with comments and I do spend time on occasion marveling at the various blog stat traffic monitors. The other day I was taking a look at the keywords that land folks on my blog. These are pretty fun to share:

Clearly I had more to say about Open XML than just these things J. I did have quite a bit to say about the standards activity, and particular the FUD being spread about the formats and about various people involved in the activity. There are a number of keywords associated with those posts as well, but we'll save those for a future post if it is needed.

Of course I learned a good lesson about keywords for having blogged about "Russian cows and a.d.o.l.e.s.c.e.n.t b.o.y.s." A sad reminder that there is a lot of different kinds of information available on the internet. The permutations of keywords related to this subject were a little surprising, to say the least.

My new year's resolution? Blog more. After the Open XML vote my blogging frequency slowed considerably, mostly because I changed focus to OBA. But knowing what a useful tool a good blog can be for setting the record straight on things, it is a worthwhile activity that I'll invest more in for 2009.

Thank you all for your continued readership, and I hope that the new year brings good fortune to you!

Gartner has published a report about document format standards. They have pointed out a number of key challenges related to document format standards, and illustrate clearly some of the issues that remain from the Open XML and ODF ratification waves.

This report offers several interesting conclusions about the utilization of document formats and exactly how they are relevant to a productivity situation. I have mentioned before (and strongly concur with their point of view) that people use products, and making decisions about user productivity certainly involves a lot more than looking at the list of supported file formats.

There isn't really a need to offer quotes from the report, it is written plainly and offers some candid views on the politics, the role of Microsoft and the reality of document exchange.

It underscores the work we have yet to do on improving document interoperability.

I recall this Rob Weir post.

"Now we shouldn't be so careless as to say that there are only 2,000 OOXML document in existence, or for that matter only 160,000 ODF documents. Not all documents are posted on the web. In fact, most of them are sitting on hard drives, in mail files, behind corporate firewalls, etc. The documents that Google sees is only a sampling of real-world documents. But this is true of both ODF and OOXML. My hard drive is loaded with ODF documents that are not included in the above sampling. But however you spin it, the minuscule number of OOXML documents and their pathetic growth rate should be a cause of concern and distress for Microsoft."

Fast-forward to today, where I was just doing some checking on file format adoption:

Aside from the numbers, the Google Trends graph really illustrates the story best (spreadsheets, presentations as well):

Indeed, Open XML has now passed ODF in terms of adoption (at least as much as this is a measure.) I'm assuming that if this measurement was good enough then, it's good enough now as well. I'm hoping we'll see Rob updating his chart soon.

But this isn't really what we're after… let's face it, the Open XML / ODF conversation has evolved far beyond this now. As Microsoft Office is working to support ODF and Open Office supports (at least partially) Open XML, the conversation is really about ensuring interoperability of both formats. Regardless of whether you favor Open XML or ODF, the path is really a means to making a dent in these numbers, or perhaps this one. Over time, we should expect to see a significant trend downward for these binary documents. But how long will it take?

At Microsoft we are now committed to helping solve the interoperability challenges required to make the meaningful dent in the binary formats. Like many others, we are sitting at the table to make a contribution to the discussion. We are moving in a positive direction, investing in Open XML, ODF, and in the interoperability conversation for real implementations.

Just like any other hard conversation, 90% of the winning formula is showing up with a constructive mindset and right intent. We're hopeful to continue the positive dialog with the ODF community and Open XML implementers alike.

Just referring back to our interoperability principles for a moment, and the ongoing commitment to them.

EMC Corporation, IBM and Microsoft today announced a jointly developed specification which uses Web Services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable applications to interoperate with multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories of different vendors.

CMIS is a technical specification domain model (data and services) for interacting with an ECM repository via Web Services. It provides a content management domain-specific data model, a set of generic services that act on that data model and several protocol bindings for these services, including: Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST)/(ATOM)

It is intended that the CMIS specification will be submitted to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

By working with other ECM vendors, hopefully this proposed standard will simplify cross-system content exchange by easing some of the implementation complexity.

If you want to read the spec, go here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=127855

More details are here and here.

It was pointed out to me today that some folks were unable to comment on the material. I was 'tuning' the site recently and probably was the cause of that, please accept my apologies. It should be working now!

I was asked recently to comment on "security" of Office 2007. Conversations like this tend to unfold in a certain way… which is to play a fun game of Technology-Tennis, where we volley questions back and forth until we get at the root of the thing… although I've never understood why the grunting is necessary. In the end our conversation was about document encryption. I'd like to post (more or less) the answer to the question on my blog, as it is one that comes up from time to time.

The question was in reference to an article about another product opening XLS files that ignored the protection settings specified on a worksheet tab, and what they could do ensure their content was actually not viewable by unintended parties. For simplicity, I'll reduce the discussion to what happens in the applications here (Vs. the use of SharePoint, NTFS, BitLocker or things like IPSec).

The conversation began by explaining that the functionality in Excel to show/hide or protect content within the workbook are not intended as a full-fledged "security" feature, rather "strong guidance" for how the consumer should be reading the information in the workbook. The use of encryption with Office is much more robust, and is the recommended method for how to apply a password to an Office 2007 document for Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

For the full detail, read this document. If you are interested in the deeper story of how Office security is managed, download this guide. If you are interested in reading about how Open XML documents are encrypted, read this document. If you are interested in reading the blog of a (the) Office security guru, read here: http://blogs.msdn.com/david_leblanc/default.aspx . His most recent post is about the MS-CRYPTO documentation.

I think you'll find that the breadth and depth of coverage available for encrypting documents, helping secure communication, protecting users from potentially harmful content and other aspects of security are an excellent illustration of how much innovation we bring to the table with any new Office release.

Below is an excerpt from the first white paper I referenced:

Microsoft 2007 Office system Document Encryption Improvements

Password protection is not a new concept in the Microsoft 2007 Office system, but it has been made stronger and easier to use. Previous versions of Microsoft Office used an RC4 stream cipher with a key length of up to 128 bits. The problem with this approach was that when changes are made to the encrypted document and the document is saved, the initialization vector (IV) remains unchanged and the same keystream is used to encrypt subsequent versions of the encrypted document. This weakness in the implementation of the RC4 encryption algorithm made it possible for hackers compare two versions of a password-protected file to discover the contents and allow unauthorized users to read its contents. A number of software companies took advantage of these limitations to make "password recovery utilities" that could decrypt RC4-protected documents. Obviously, it was time to move to a now a new means of encrypting documents.

Microsoft 2007 Office system document encryption is a significant improvement. The encryption information block is the same as in previous versions of Office, but the Microsoft 2007 Office system uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption, which is the strongest industry-standard algorithm available and was selected by the National Security Agency (NSA) to be used as the standard for the U.S. Government, AES has a default 128-bit key (which can be increased to 256-bit via the Windows Registry) and uses SHA-1 hashing. In addition, The Microsoft 2007 Office system improves the algorithm of converting passwords into keys: 50,000 SHA-1 sequential iterations are performed.

Some key facts about Microsoft 2007 Office system document encryption:

• Only Microsoft Word 2007 documents, Microsoft Excel 2007 workbooks, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 presentations can be encrypted using the built-in Microsoft 2007 Office system encryption feature.
  
• The default encryption algorithm is AES 128-bit. This value can be increased to AES 256-bit via a Registry entry, local security policy, or domain Group Policy.
  
• AES encryption is supported for Open XML formats used in previous versions of Microsoft Office when those documents are created in an Microsoft 2007 Office system application. However, documents saved in the older Office binary formats can only be encrypted using RC4 to maintain compatibility with older versions of Microsoft Office.
  
• AES support is a function of the operating system's cryptographic services providers (CSPs). AES encryption is supported on Windows Server 2003, Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.
  
• The level of protection provided by the AES encryption is related to the strength of the password used to protect the document. You should use complex passwords that include upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols and that are at least 8 characters long.
  
• Password complexity cannot be enforced for Microsoft 2007 Office system encryption. Users should be encouraged to use complex passwords during training.
  
• There are no administrative settings that force users to encrypt documents
  

It's important to note that there are two options to add a password in Microsoft 2007 Office system documents. One option enables you to encrypt the document using a password; this is referred to as a Password to open. The second option does not use any encryption. It is designed so you can collaborate with content reviewers you trust, but is not designed to help make the file more secure. This is referred to as the Password to modify.

You'll see some blog traffic on this, so I thought I'd throw my own log onto the fire.

I attended the ODF workshop yesterday, mainly to sit in the back and watch how things unfolded, but also to learn a little bit myself. I must say that after the conclusion of the event, I was quite happy about how the thing went. It was time well spent for me; learning about the perspectives of ODF experts was a good experience. I was left with a few impressions that I thought I'd share…

It seems the bridge building between Microsoft and many individuals in the ODF community is having a positive impact. I think back to Patrick Durusau's comments on Open XML earlier in the year, and look at that as one of the important catalysts for a more cooperative tone between Microsoft and many ODF supporters. While folks (like me) were busy slugging it out in various forums, there were folks within Microsoft and within the ODF community seeking to have an informed and rational conversation on file formats. Folks like Rick Jeliffe who have (and continue to) ride out the storm, hopeful that good sense will prevail are a great source of inspiration for me. When you meet folks like this, it is easy to want to work with them.

This collaborative spirit was definitely in play during the event. As I listened to the feedback from folks in attendance I couldn't help but think.. "is it more remarkable that our these folks (who are competitors in many cases) are giving us implementation feedback.. or that we are so eager to have it?"

The most surprising aspect of the discussion to me was the constant stream of commentary that roughly said "I can't believe Microsoft is being this open… this is great…" It is welcome feedback of course, and as a new parent, allow me to share the pearl of wisdom that says the best way to encourage desirable behavior is through praise J.. In some ways the feedback was not surprising, many of the folks in the room would have been considered opponents at one point or another. The amount of information shared, the candor in the discussion and the overall level of outreach on Doug & team's behalf probably felt 'different' to some of the folks in the room.

On the other hand, I was appreciating the irony of having stepped out of the room for 2 hours during the day to brief a customer on Office, discussing various interoperability issues. It was a presentation I've given 100 times or more; much of the content was the same as what we were discussing in the ODF workshop. The variable here is the audience, of course. Having expanded the file format implementation discussion to many of these folks in the ODF community will be very helpful for us. And from a customer perspective, presenting a little less disharmony on interoperability issues doesn't hurt either. Standing together as an industry and community of software and service providers (even through disagreement) reduces the trepidation I've witnessed from customers not eager to step into the interoperability conversation.

From a personal perspective, I was glad to meet Jesper Lund Stocholm in person, it was great to meet Dennis Hamilton, and also great to meet Patrick Durusau. I'd say that I didn't have nearly enough time to talk to any of them (or anyone else), I was listening more than engaging in the discussion.

But I left the day feeling very good about our participation in the ODF community.

As I troll the blogosphere and reporting on Open XML and ODF, I notice a question has surfaced regarding the future of Open XML that is probably worth addressing.

Many have asked or speculated that the recent announcement of ODF in Service Pack 2 is an indication that Microsoft is quietly stepping away from Open XML. Some ask… "Is Microsoft abandoning Open XML?"

In a word, no.

Microsoft will continue to support the development of the specification and the adoption of the Open XML formats, in addition to the other work we are driving around document formats in Office.

I hope this is as unambiguous and clear as it is intended to be.

We will continue to drive adoption of the compatibility pack for Open XML, which has now surpassed 40 Million individual downloads and gaining significant uptake in large-scale deployments. We will continue to ship developer tools, translators, code samples, documentation, MSDN content and other material intended to educate people on how Open XML can help them solve specific business problems. Open XML is prominently featured in many Office Business Applications. Our engagement on the DAISY Translator has been a huge help in the Accessibility community. There are lots of great positives for Open XML momentum.

In the end, Open XML is still the better choice for the compatibility and line-of-business interoperability scenarios we have discussed throughout its history.

ODF also provides us with opportunities for improving interoperability with other products and solutions, and we're happy to embrace those as well. Our addition of ODF to SP2 for 2007 was done for the reasons outlined in my previous post. As some of you have already seen, we've taken a step to engage the community by inviting members of the ODF TC to visit Redmond and take a look at what is being implemented, and we are working very hard to ensure our implementation of the format passes muster with the ODF community (although I must admit I found the spin on that invitation to be a little surprising).

But always know that while we are working on ODF moving forward, we will remain committed to Open XML and believe that it will be the format of choice for large parts of the global community.

Today we will release the beta version of Microsoft Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 via our Connect site. This version of Producer works with PowerPoint 2007, Windows Vista, and IE7, and is also compatible with Open XML. This is a long-awaited add-in for many customers, we're happy to be on the final path to getting it out the door.

In case you're not familiar with Producer, it is a free add-in which enables PowerPoint users to capture, synchronize, and publish audio, video, slides, and images to create engaging rich media presentations that can be viewed in a web browser.

We're running the beta until June 30, 2008, and then will review the feedback we received from customers. We're planning to release the final version of Producer 2007 to the Office Download Center in the Jul/Aug'08 timeframe.

Here's how you can access the Producer 2007 beta:

Click here to jump to the Connect site or type http://www.connect.microsoft.com in your web browser.

Click Sign In and enter your Windows Live ID.

• If you are not already registered on Connect, enter the requested details to complete your Connect site registration.

Click the Connection Directory tab, and then click Office in the Categories list in the left-hand navigation pane.

Scroll through the list of available Connections and locate the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta.

• You may want to change the Sort By criteria to list by Connection Name (A-Z).

When you have found the link for the Producer beta site, click the + Add to Your Dashboard link displayed next to it.

• The next time you return to the Connect site you can click the Your Dashboard tab instead of the Connection Directory tab to jump to the Producer beta site or any other Connection you are participating in.

Click the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta link to go to the beta site.

• Review the FAQs and Links on the site for helpful information about Producer and this beta.
• Click the Downloads link in the left-hand navigation pane to download and install Producer 2007.
• Click the Feedback link in the left-hand navigation pane to provide feedback and report any possible bugs.

If you can't find the Producer beta site in Connect, check back later today. It will be posted during the day today. You can also learn more about Producer from the PowerPoint team's blog here .

Updated. April 28, 2009. Office 2007 SP2 is available for download. For more information: http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton/archive/2009/04/27/office-2007-service-pack-2-kiosk.aspx 

For those of you who have been following the file format issue for a while, you'll recognize today's action by Microsoft as another significant step forward in enabling interoperability. This hopefully sends a signal (again) to our customers that we are committed (like all successful software businesses are) to addressing the needs of people who use our products by providing choice and interoperability. (Read more, Read even more)

If you missed the announcement, it roughly said the following:

Microsoft Office functionality will be updated to include ODF, PDF and XPS support:

• Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will include both "Save as ODF" and "Save as PDF and XPS" functionality.
• The next major release of Microsoft Office, currently codenamed "Office 14," will update its support for IS29500, the specification that resulted from the ISO process.

Microsoft will contribute to the future evolution of the ODF and Open XML specifications.   

• Microsoft will join the OASIS ODF Technical Committee
• Microsoft will participate in the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC-34 committee responsible for the maintenance of Open XML (IS29500)
• Microsoft will participate in the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC-34 committee responsible for the maintenance of ODF (IS26300)
• Microsoft will participate in the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC-34 committee responsible for interoperability between IS29500 and IS26300

Microsoft will contribute to the developments of other document format standards:

• Microsoft will participate in the standardization of XPS underway in ECMA
• Microsoft will participate in future maintenance of PDF in AIIM
• Microsoft will work to promote interoperability with Open XML and UOF, the Chinese national document format standard

A lot of the folks who read the blogs are (rightfully) consumed with the "why?" question… or perhaps even the "Why now?" question. I'd like to take a little time to explain both. I think I can help add some context about why this decision was made, and why we think now is an appropriate time to take these steps.

There are really two central catalysts for these actions. One of these is the feedback we have received from the regulatory environment. There is a high degree of interest in our working with other software vendors to improve information exchange through the use of standardized technologies. In addition, we remain committed to promoting interoperability in our products which means creating the technology bridges necessary for the successful exchange of data with other solutions.

The second catalyst is how these advancements will help drive success in our business. Folks will offer theories across the spectrum about what Microsoft is "trying to do" or what these actions "mean." I'd like to offer a very simple rationale to explain why this is a net positive for our business, and to illustrate some of the thinking about our timing for the adoption of ODF.

Success in our industry (like a lot of other industries) boils down to successfully addressing the needs of customers. By offering greater choice for file formats, our products address more scenarios and provide greater flexibility in enabling specific solutions. From a pragmatic standpoint, adding ODF to Office allows us to re-focus Office on product capabilities rather than a debate about file formats. We're quite comfortable when we compete in the marketplace on these merits.

A natural follow-on question seeks to understand why we would bother with Open XML when we could have just supported ODF from the beginning and moved on…

(I'm oversimplifying a bit here, but) questions about compatibility and moving legacy content forward were very important to our customers, and we were already well down the road with XML-based formats that were designed to represent legacy content. Because ODF side-stepped the compatibility question, we were left to solve (continue solving) that challenge elsewhere; the aversion to dealing with legacy content created a real problem for customers who want to transition to more open file formats.

Speaking very plainly, business continuity is one of the most important drivers of software purchasing decisions. The goals of Open XML with regard to compatibility and preserving legacy content are things that we simply could not do without.

Those who have been involved with Microsoft Office for many years will remember the problems created when Microsoft essentially "flipped the switch" on a new document format for Office '97, offering little consideration for compatibility with existing applications. This had a negative effect on our business, and we were not keen to repeat the mistake. In many standards committee meetings, compatibility was regarded as a "factor," but in reality, the list of things that rank higher in importance is very short.

Open XML is a necessary, worthy standard; it is unique in its intent to address this problem. We will sustain our investment in Open XML through participation in ECMA and ISO, as well as in the development community. We are also committed to having a high-quality implementation of ODF. We accept the responsibility of driving toward interoperability with other products and platforms. We will work with supporters of Open XML, ODF, PDF and XPS to achieve interoperability.

Achieving meaningful, successful interoperability involves participation in the evolution of the standards as well as conducting public forums on real-world implementation issues. In our early testing we are observing that every product implementing these standards has some level of variation from the written spec. If you've been around standards for a while, you'll know this is common, and requires dialog to establish best practices & patterns. This is our reason for joining the OASIS, AIIM and ISO committees, as well as our motivation for hosting public forums like OpenXMLDeveloper.org to discuss our implementation of the formats. These are environments where we hope to learn as much as we contribute… we now get to the real work of enabling interoperability rather than theorizing about its potential in committees. I know the work will be challenging, but I am hopeful that this will ground the document format standards conversation in real-world implementation conversations, where we can uncover and resolve issues that make products share data with greater success.

Just some technical notes (and to tee up future posts) Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will incorporate support for ODF 1.1, to align to the other significant products and policies that support ODF today. SP2 will also support PDF 1.5, and the ISO standard PDF/A. These PDF versions are intended to maximize compatibility with the existing base of installed PDF viewing applications.

Office 14 will update our support for IS29500. The timing for this might seem strange, but I do hope the rationale is clear. ODF 1.1 is a completed specification. The final version of IS29500 is not published today. While we do support a significant portion of IS29500 already, the BRM changes and other issues raised in public forums will inform us on how to best move forward with IS29500… and it gives me a little time to address the compatibility considerations that will be an important part of any file format related changes in Office. ODF has a potential upside in expanding interoperability, but as always, business continuity requirements will have a significant effect on our approach to these file format changes. Our customers will accept nothing less…

The Open XML to DAISY Translator is available in release form now. You can download the tool and install it for yourself. It really is great to see this come to fruition. We are grateful for our partnership with DAISY, they have been very helpful in educating us on the best ways to support users with specific disabilities. They have been enthusiastic, supportive and very encouraging of our efforts, and we hope to continue our partnership with DAISY in the future. Our commitment to interoperability and to users with disabilities is real, and we putting weight behind the promise with actions. While a lot of folks are left to do the talking on the issue, the presence of this tool is another of many opportunities we have to demonstrate actions that support our commitments to interoperability.

When you install the translator, you are also presented with Authoring Guidelines for DAISY. This is a very useful feature to assist folks in understanding some of the aspects of authoring accessible content. There is a fair bit of documentation included on what is supported in the tool as well. I will leave it to you to test the tool...

I want to also thank Sonata for their continued assistance on this translator and other Open XML related activities. Sonata has been very active with DAISY and Microsoft in moving the accessibility cause forward.

Links in this post:

Sourceforge translator for Open XML to DAISY: http://daisymfc.sourceforge.net/#dl
DAISY Pipeline application: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=208610
Sonata Software: http://www.sonata-software.com/?info=EXLINK

It's a pretty rare opportunity to have an entire month away from work. I was getting acquainted to our new family member, taking care of various chores. My lawn never looked so good… a month is a long time. I've improved my skills at caulking, miter cuts, plumbing, gardening, weed trimming and a bunch of other useful areas. I must admit it was very hard driving into work today. I am excited to be back, but I will miss mornings with baby. You get a little spoiled with an opportunity like this, I'm grateful for having the time off.

I'm back now. Since I spent (literally) zero time on Open XML, Office, Microsoft or anything else, I'm sure it'll take a bit of time to get re-acquainted with my job and my team. This morning I have 3500 unread emails, 30MB of updates to install, 5 meetings, and a lot of faces to find in the hallways. It's going to be a busy month gearing up for TechEd 2008 in Orlando.

The ratification of Open XML as an ISO standard is a great outcome from the post-BRM voting period. Ecma and the Open XML project editors have been working tirelessly to address the comments from national bodies. The consensus achieved during the Ballot Resolution Meeting resulted in many approved changes to the specification. National bodies acknowledged that improvement with many countries changing their votes in a positive direction, concluding with more than 85% of all countries voting to approve Open XML as an ISO standard.

Open XML has earned quick market adoption among a variety of applications and platforms, and its ratification today underscores the industry need for choice and freedom in technology standards. Standards organizations, individuals and consumers agree that representing the content of legacy documents is critical to the sustainability of information, and Open XML is a giant positive step in that direction.

When we first started with Open XML, much of the discussion revolved around how we are going to try to make the format acceptable to IT organizations, and how we are going to convince them that moving to XML-based document formats will be helpful to them. We wanted to learn from past experiences and make the transition to Open XML as easy as possible. We were determined to make sure that folks really understood that when we say "open" we mean it. We wanted to make sure that our partners could utilize tools and expertise to migrate their investment in the legacy document formats to the new XML-based formats.

A lot of people were enthused by the opportunity to submit the formats to a standards body. We'd been on a path to opening the formats, and we knew that submitting Open XML to Ecma was going to offer many new opportunities for people wanting to work with their documents. Open XML was improved by the participation of everyone in the community; its advancement has already been a global effort.

After the ratification of Open XML as an ISO standard, we can look back on the enormous amount of work undertaken and feel good about the process, the participants and the results. We have met with many challenges along the way, and Microsoft and Ecma have responded at each step. Microsoft has made huge strides toward openness and interoperability.

Looking toward the future, we will continue to work on the adoption of Open XML. We will work with more partners to develop Open XML solutions. I am looking forward to watching Open XML grow and mature within the technology marketplace. We have strong progress with the formats today. I also look forward to more interoperability-related activity from Microsoft, as we stand behind the commitment to our interoperability principles.

On a personal note, I've been around or involved with document format standards now since 2001, starting with the PDF/X family of standards. Working on Open XML for the past 3.5 years has been quite a pleasure because I have met many new people in many countries who have a lot to contribute on the topic of document formats, It started with early customer discussions, the planning of the announcement of Open XML at TechEd in 2005, all the way to the post BRM voting period within ISO/IEC… quite a ride.

If you didn't catch it my earlier blog post, while everyone else was at the BRM, I was busy becoming a new father. My daughter was born on the 29^th of February. Just as the vote is winding down, I'm on my way out for paternity leave. After all the long nights and hard work on Open XML, I get to take a month off to be with my family, which will be a welcome adjustment to my perspective. I'm very glad to be beginning that time with a positive result.

It is a great day.

It is interesting to witness vocal minority who insist Open XML and ODF become the same format. It must cause them terrible heartburn to know that their recommendation comes against the wishes of the ODF Editor. And yes, Rob, this is Mr. Durusau speaking as "the editor of OpenDocument." So much for fine distinctions.

http://www.durusau.net/publications/wholoses.pdf

Mr. Patrick Durusau is again making his position on the issue clear:

Coming on the back of the "Approve" confirmation of the United States national body (guess Bob Sutor couldn't bully them, eh?), it is great to see this video on YouTube. These are the comments by Bill Gates during his testimony to the United States House of Representatives. Congressman Brian Baird is asking the questions of Mr. Gates and offering the positive comments.

Bob Sutor has emerged from blogging about Second Life to once again attempt to threaten and intimidate national standards bodies.

I'd like to call your attention to a few of the questions he's asking about:

"Those were the easy and straightforward ones. The following ones are more controversial, but I don't think anyone is naive enough to think they should not be considered.

• If you voted YES on this, are you willing to stake your professional reputation on that action?
• If you voted YES on this, can you personally attest to the high quality of the OOXML technology and the standards process it went through?
• If you voted YES on this, will you publicly explain why and also detail any current or planned commercial interests you have in common with the supporters of OOXML?
• If you previously did not support OOXML but recently changed your mind, will you publicly and in detail explain why you did this?
• Do you personally feel that OOXML helps the ISO and IEC "brands" related to quality of technology and process?"

I interpret this as Bob Sutor and IBM trying to intimidate national standard officials. I'm not sure how one would see it any other way than this. So Bob, I just have one or two questions of my own to add to the discussion:

• Are you tired of being bullied, threatened and criticized by IBM?
• Are you offended that a Vice President at IBM is calling your professional integrity into question?
• Have you been working on standards for 20 years or so and suddenly puzzled at why IBM is telling you how to interpret the rules?
• Does it seem strange for IBM to accuse Microsoft of having unclear IP policies, but then write almost exactly the same agreement?

I would have just commented this on your blog, but your "Open Blog" does not allow comments from people who don't agree with you on Open XML.

FYI that I'm not the only one who has a huge problem with this: http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/03/critical_questions_for_nationa.html

Interesting post here: http://www.oooninja.com/2008/03/openofficeorg-30-new-features.html

"Microsoft Office 2007 file format support

Microsoft Office 2007 (also called Office Open XML) file formats include .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx. Despite the similarity in names, these formats are significantly different than the Microsoft Office formats used since 1997. OpenOffice.org 3 will offer native read and write support.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m3 converted this reference .docx document with mediocre quality. The notable problems were tracked changes, a comment, columns, an image, and an embedded Excel document. For comparison, the same document is shown rendered in Word 2007 and in OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m3."

The post references this link as well: http://katana.oooninja.com/w/odf-converter-integrator

Once again, those interested in interoperability benefit from adoption of the Open XML formats. I'll take this as a very strong statement of support for the Open XML IP Policy.  I'm just wondering, is this what IBM is contributing to OpenOffice.org? Is this why they joined? :)

Onward!

Ooh.. (should I say Ouch!): http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/03/how_many_defects_remain_answer.html. Once again Rob Weir is defeated (handily).

"One of the constant themes over the last year has been the theme of panic. QUICK: You only have one month to find contradictions. QUICK: You only have five months to find defects. You only have a few weeks to evaluate the Editor's comments. Every person has to read or review the whole standard. Every national body needs to have an explicit detailed position on every issue. And so on. Always under the assumption that the current stage is the last and only chance for change.

It every case this panic is has been unnecessary FUD-mongering, because at ISO there is always the scope for improving a standard. [The normal caveat that you want to get it as right as possible first time because you cannot bolt the stable door once the horse has bolted does not apply with the same strength as with a from-scratch standard because the horse has already bolted. In fact the horse has been off and running for the last 20 years! So "getting it right" relates to documentations and harmonization rather than the general shape.]"

Aah… http://www.irislink.com/Documents/pdf/200803181557/Microsoft-031808.pdf Iris announces a partnership with Microsoft for delivering OCR solutions for Open XML. Notable from this announcement:

"I.R.I.S. being a Microsoft Gold Partner, has always been investing a lot of time and effort to provide the best support of the Microsoft formats in all of its products, said Pierre De Muelenaere, I.R.I.S. Group President and CEO. For instance, we recently announced new capability to convert images into fully‐searchable XPS files and also hyper‐compressed XPS files, using our iHQC™ document compression technology. More and more customers are confronted to situation where they need to convert documents from one format to another. A typical example is the need to convert massive amount of existing Tiff Group IV documents to fully‐searchable PDF, PDF‐A or XPS documents, for more advanced ECM applications, or to ODF or OpenXML for document repurposing. Our solutions, allow the user to select the format that best suits its needs"

Ooh… http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/03/13/open-xml-sdk-roadmap.aspx The Open XML SDK is announced, making it easier for developers to work with Office file formats.

"After nine months of developer feedback on the Open XML SDK, we have some good news today: a roadmap for releasing the API. We have two versions coming: a version 1.0 that will be released in May, and then a version 2.0 that will be available as a CTP this summer, and will be released around the time of the next major release of Office (Office "14")."

Allow me to return the favor of posting Doug's photo on my blog. Here's the famous "Hug Madogh" doing one of the things he does best:

Aah… http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2008/03/18/ongoing-support-for-is-29500-open-xml.aspx And for all my new fans at Groklaw, Brian Jones has also posted on the Chris Capossela open letter, noting our intent to support DIS29500 in it's post BRM-state in our products. Hopefully the repetition will help a little bit.

Ooh.. http://idippedut.dk/post/2008/03/IBM-is-now-fighting-from-the-trenches.aspx Speaking of Groklaw, I was glad to see Jesper Lund Stocholm offer a comment on the SFLC report. I'm always a fan of folks who bring reason and logic to the table to discuss things. The folks on Groklaw were apparently pretty upset that I stopped comments on my SFLC post, so they now have increased opportunities to share their thoughts on the topic.

I've seen a few comments this week quoting my comments in PC World, and claiming that I have somehow recommended a "no" vote on Open XML.

"If individual governments mandate the use of ODF instead of Open XML, Microsoft would adapt. The company would then implement the missing functionality that ODF doesn't support."

So, consider this my (first) response:

Regarding my comments here: (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141424-pg,1/article.html), It is unfortunate to see folks who elect to omit parts of the statements that do not support their case. The full comment is quoted here, to avoid any misunderstanding in the future.

"Also, if individual governments mandate the use of ODF instead of Open XML, Microsoft would adapt, Knowlton said. The company would then implement the missing functionality that ODF doesn't support. However, those extensions would be custom-designed and outside of the standard, which is counter to the idea of an open document standard, Knowlton said. "Disastrous? No. But definitely not preferable," he said"

I've added some additional context here:
http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton/archive/2008/02/20/harmonization-vs-unification.aspx

"I do not believe it is feasible just to add features of one format to another. These formats are not subsets and supersets of each other, there are fundamental differences in text, table, graphic and style models, spreadsheets have a very different representation, and on and on and on. "Unification" points toward an argument about how product code bases will have to be re-written, and there are no winners in that discussion.

Suggesting that one can just copy / paste between these formats because they appear to be "90% similar" is an insincere / inadequate / uninformed attempt at understanding the issues that are involved.

To ensure my position is unambiguous: Anything that Microsoft does with respect to ODF has no effect on our position on Open XML. The two formats are designed for different purposes, and would not benefit by being "unified" or "merged." Should you encounter lobbying within your national body or government agency on my behalf, feel free to reach out to me directly for comment on the issue. I'll be glad to share the whole picture with you, not just the half that suits my needs.

If you are preparing comments for your national body which represent the situation as anything other than my endorsement of a "Yes" vote of Open XML, you are misrepresenting fact.

Chris Capossela, SVP at Microsoft (somewhere high in the altitude of my management chain) has published an open letter regarding Open XML. This is another effort to underscore our commitments to openness, the Open XML process, and building the Open XML community. This is a great letter that you should read in its entirety, but I've extracted an important section here, based on my recent increased readership from the likes of Groklaw.

"Pledging our support
Above and beyond our own implementation, however, I wish to make it clear that to enable broader adoption of the format – including for use by our current and future competitors - we have made our commitment to Open XML unambiguous, and as such have made (through our Open Specification Promise) irrevocable, royalty-free patent commitments to all developers to implement the formats.

We submitted the original Open XML specification to Ecma International for consideration in 2005 because we wanted to respond to our public and private sector customers' requests that we turn over control of the specification to the community. Ecma International's further development of the specification for more than a year, and its adoption of Open XML as an Ecma International Standard (Ecma 376) in December 2006 was a realization of that goal. Now, the global community has the opportunity to take control of the future of the specification by ratifying Ecma 376 as an ISO/IEC standard. We know that it will be in good hands when this happens based on the tremendous work and improvements that have been made to the specification during the ISO/IEC process over the past 14 months. We are committed to the healthy maintenance of the standard once ratification takes place so that it will continue to be useful and relevant to the rapidly growing number of implementers and users around the world.

We have listened to our customers and the community and are proud of the work that has been done on the Open XML formats. We believe that these formats deliver unique value to the industry and users will benefit from it being in the hands of the global community as an ISO/IEC standard."

Open XML has the commitment, the community support and the momentum working for it now.