IBM Urges Staff to Move to Open Standards (Non-MS) Office SoftwareIBM Urges Staff to Move to Open Standards (Non-MS) Office Software

IBM chief information officer Mark Hennessey and vice president Gina Poole have sent a memo to the company's technical staff, urging them to start using productivity software that -- unlike Microsoft Office -- conforms to open standards.The memo, sent to 20,000 employees, promoted ?a new, more integrated approach to desktop productivity software"--such as that taken by IBM subsidiary Lotus's Symphony suite. IBM backs the Open Document Format standard for electronic documents, an open, XML-based format also supported by Google Docs, OpenOffice, Zoho, and Corel WordPerfect Office.

Microsoft has been pushing its own Office Open XML open document format for adoption by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), but that process has been stalled following objections from Brazil, India, South Africa, and Venezuela.The Irish Times