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 .
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 29th 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:
"As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO. Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else. Here are some specifics:
OpenDocument currently lacks formula definitions for spreadsheets. (To appear in OpenDocument 1.2.) Many core financial functions in spreadsheets are undefined except for actual Excel output. That output varies by version and service pack of MS Office. What happens if OpenDocument and OpenXML reach different definitions of those functions?
OpenDocument does not presently support legacy features of Microsoft formats. That will be easier with a formal definition of those features. Without OpenXML, OpenDocument has no authoritative definition of those legacy features. That delays OpenDocument supporting them in some future release.
OpenDocument does not have a robust mapping to the current Microsoft format. That requires an OpenXML that has completed the standards process. If OpenXML is unclear, it must be fixed in order to create a robust mapping between the two.
The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses.
Covington, 24 March 2008
Patrick Durusau"
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:
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.
I used to live in Dublin (on Mount Street, just above Grafton Street)... I spent many, many days in the Oval pub just off O'Connell street, and I remember every one of those days fondly. Spending two St. Patrick's day holidays in front of the St. Patrick's day Parade in Dublin changed my perspective on the holiday somewhat. When you experience a holiday in its proper context, it really does add a perspective around what is important, and what it means to build and live in a community. When it's all said and done, there may be a lot of talk and banter, but there's no substitute for real action.
Thus, today's post is just a pulse to reset on the broad Open XML support in the industry. It really is great to see how far Open XML has come in such a short period of time. Open XML is experiencing broad uptake from users and developers alike. For end users, the compatibility pack was downloaded 20 million times in its first year of release.
You can find a list of interesting examples of Open XML support in applications
There are 160 solutions listed in Germany alone
Adobe has joined the ranks of companies offering Open XML support in its products:
There are a number of significant case studies for Open XML as well
iT-Workplace (Nottingham, England)
Software vendor iT-Workplace develops online analytical processing (OLAP) reporting solutions for developers and business users in the United Kingdom. In 2007, they released Intelligencia for Microsoft Word 2007 that embeds reporting functionality usually only available in Microsoft Office Excel and database tools into a word processing-based format. Users can simply create a wide-range of business reports using Microsoft Word 2007 skills. Based on the internationally recognized standard, Ecma Office Open XML, the front-end application sources "live" data directly from a Microsoft SQL Server database. When the database is updated, the corresponding data is modified in the Word document, and vice-versa. What's more, this dynamic data can interact with other systems easily exchanging data between office applications and enterprise business systems. Employees can improve productivity by publishing, searching, and reusing information more quickly and accurately in the application they choose, as long as it supports reading and writing XML; developers can write the information about all the data connections into the Word document itself so that when the document is reopened, data integration continues without interruption. There is no need for a separate data file because all the configuration information is written back into the Word document itself. Download PDF case study
Money Partners (United Kingdom)
United Kingdom-based Money Partners deployed X-Merge developed by Dot Net Solutions. It uses the XML file format to help employees and brokers quickly create detailed templates and forms with familiar Microsoft Office Word tools. As a result, the XML-based system is much faster, delivering an impressive throughput of hundreds of documents a minute. In addition, most of the company's business analysts who regularly use Word can now manage templates themselves without expensive development time. Download PDF case study
Florida House of Representatives (Florida, United States)
The Florida House of Representatives has benefitted from using Office Open XML file formats when they incorporated a pilot project using Microsoft Office 2007 system. Prior, they were finding that during their debate process multiple amendments to bills made by senators were creating delays to the process and errors. Office Open XML helped them complete their tasks 60% faster, with fewer errors, reduced training costs, and provided a more effective search capability solution. Download PDF case study
Skyfish, Inc. (Japan)
Skyfish, Inc., is a software application development company based in Japan and a certified member of the Microsoft Accessible Technology Vendor Program (MATvp). MATvp is aimed at those companies that design, develop, and provide support for accessible technology products that satisfy the needs of schools and corporations who have customers and users with disabilities or functional limitations. Skyfish recently added JukeDoX, a document file reader software product for the visually impaired, to their line of products. JukeDoX was built on Open XML technology and only took a half a year to develop—a much shorter development period than initially budgeted for. According to Skyfish, data can be safely written and JukeDoX has excellent interoperability due to Open XML technology. Download PDF case study
MS Technology, Inc. (Charlotte, North Carolina, USA)
MS Technology is a software development company that specializes in imaging and image-processing technology for primarily High Tech and Electronics Manufacturing customers in India and the United States. In 2006, their customers demanded a platform-independent document format and better safeguards against corrupted files in two of their products, MSTViewer and MSTJavaViewer, which give users the ability to open different file formats, save documents in different formats, and annotate documents. As of October 2007, about 12 enterprise customers in India—each with nearly 50,000 worldwide users—take advantage of support for Open XML in the MS Technology MSTViewer and MSTJavaViewer. The results have been greater time savings and cost savings, better handling of corrupted documents, decreased storage needs, and increased choice for improved customer satisfaction. The company plans to officially release its Open XML-ready products in December 2007 and also plans to use Open XML in its reporting mechanism as the company moves into the medical imaging industry. Download PDF case study
These are partners of Microsoft who offer some level of support for Open XML within their solutions. This would include SharePoint products, technologies and services, Office client related products and services and so on. If you use the search from the screen shot below (select Open XML from the technology list and leave everything else blank). You should get 100+ solutions here as well.
No matter how you look at it, Open XML is becoming an integral part of many, many products. The widespread use of Open XML underscores its importance as an international standard. Take this into consideration next time your favorite blogger or website claims otherwise. J
