Microsoft's XML Standard Needs Fast Track Approval To Halt DefectionsMicrosoft's XML Standard Needs Fast Track Approval To Halt Defections

When the ECMA International standards board approves Microsoft's XML file format technology this week and hands it off to the International Standards Organization (ISO) for another level of approval, the software colossus will have nailed down an important piece of its strategy to keep the IT world in the Microsoft fold.

ECMA's approval, a foregone conclusion after more than a year of study, likely won't stop the parade of governmental bodies from adopting the competing OpenDocument Format (ODF), but it will help Microsoft in its effort to claim it is serious about providing interoperability for its hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

U.S. trade association CompTIA summed up the situation as ECMA prepared to approve the Microsoft effort: "We believe it is critically important to place ISO approval of Open XML on a fast track," said CompTIA president and CEO John Venator in a letter to ECMA. "Many governments and public agencies have recently promulgated, or are currently considering the promulgation of, document format policies on open standards approved by ISO."

Microsoft has been boasting that its effort has a long list of prominent supporters including Apple Computer, Barclays Capital, BP, the British Library, Intel, Toshiba, and the U.S. Library of Congress. Of particular importance, however, is support from Novell, which is preparing plug-in translators between its OpenOffice offering and Microsoft Office Open XML. Clever Age, a French firm, has been working on the translator with Novell.

ISO approval, however, could take many months. Microsoft needs ISO approval to help staunch the flow of approvals of ODF by governments.

"For governments, it's control of IT budgets that's at stake," said Sam Hiser, vice president and director of business affairs at the Open Document Foundation. "Open source gives government users real flexibility. It gives them control over budgets and they like that they can mix and match [software]." He noted that governments tend to be "document centric" and want the confidence that documents can be easily accessible for 100 years.

In recent weeks, ODF has been embraced by several governmental bodies in Brazil, France, Italy, Poland and India. An early adopter in the U.S. was Massachusetts, which endorsed ODF more than a year ago for use by some 50,000 government employees. Opponents of the Massachusetts ODF deal complained that Microsoft was being unfairly shut out of the state work. Now ECMA approval and Novell's translators could enable Microsoft to keep its foot in the government door in Massachusetts.

ODF has a head start with ISO approval, which it received last summer and which was formally published by the standards organization last week. Microsoft's ECMA submission comprised more than 6,000 pages. The challenge of plowing through so much could drag out approval by ISO. (ODF's submission was less than 700 pages.)

"The ECMA spec stacks up on a desk as high as your shoulder," said Hiser. "It can cost $1,000 just to print it out."

Interoperability is the key to the XML formats battle and CompTIA's Venator stressed its importance. "Competition among multiple open document standards will enhance innovation in document formats and increase flexibility and interoperability all to the benefit of software consumers. The approval of Open XML as an open standard will ensure that digital content is more efficiently stored and managed today as well as into the future."

Microsoft, too, has emphasized the value of interoperability maintaining that its XML submission "will benefit the broader software ecosystem because software and services vendors worldwide will be able to more easily build compelling solutions that interoperate across a broad spectrum of technologies."