Awaiting international approval: Microsoft's Open XML

The anticipated adoption of Ecma 376 standard on Office Open XML document formats, based on Microsoft contribution, as an international standard by the ISO/IEC will have immensely positive effects on customer choice and interoperability in the future, says Microsoft South Africa's Information Worker Business Group Executive, Cyril Belikoff.

Ecma 376 standard on Office Open XML file formats, based on a Microsoft contribution, was approved from the Geneva-based ECMA International standards body in December 2006.

Ecma has now submitted the specification, under a fast-track process, to the larger ISO/IEC standardisation body, making Open XML an international standard that will allow anyone to build products that access information stored in Office documents.

Users (including enterprises and government entities) have demanded that Open XML be designed so that it is backward compatible with the billions of existing documents created using earlier formats.

"This is a very important concept because, if not implemented, billions of documents will be left out of the eco-system," says Belikoff.

According to Belikoff, a standardised document format will make it easier for competing software companies to develop products that can work smoothly with one another. Products meeting the standard could be extremely useful to governments or other organisations concerned about interoperability.

"For example, this can be illustrated through MindJet's endorsement of Open XML in its Mindmapper application, a compelling example of an ISV utilising the flexibility of the standard.

"The Open XML File Format provides increased levels of compression and recovery of information. In addition, it provides the ability to access, manually or programmatically, different components of the document, ie formatting, content, styles, etc," continues Belikoff.

Microsoft has garnered extensive industry backing for ECMA Open XML Formats from other major technology players. More than 750 developers have joined the Open XML Development Group, and many different government and private sector customers are now evaluating the specific benefits for their organisations.

The release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and announcements from Novell and Corel that they support Open XML in their OpenOffice.org and WordPerfect offerings, mean the Open XML Formats will be used by millions of customers worldwide, across both Windows and Linux platforms.

"The ECMA vote was a major milestone in furthering document interoperability. We believe customers will really appreciate the benefits that Open XML provides," comments Belikoff. "We look forward to continuing to work with ECMA and the other contributors, extending our collaboration across the industry as part of the ISO/IEC process. Many of our local partners have shown support for this ISO/IEC standardisation."

This cross-industry collaboration saw representatives from Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba and the United States Library of Congress work together for more than a year to standardise the Open XML formats and ensure full documentation and interoperability.

The importance of interoperability cannot be underestimated. Indeed, it is vital for the preservation of archive information, according to Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library and a member of the committee that worked on the standard at ECMA. The British Library archives electronic documents, and must work with them in whatever format they arrive. The development of interoperable software tools will make that work easier.