What OOXML Means to You
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News Analysis. As fictitious Dr. Zachary Smith would say, "Oh, the pain...the pain!" |
That's what many enterprises are sure to experience now that Microsoft's OOXML (Office Open XML) has lumbered through the (ISO) International Organization for Standardization ratification process. On Wednesday, ISO announced what had been presumed since the weekend—that OOXML had received enough votes for standards approval. The new designation: ISO/IEC DIS 29500.
Many IT organizations may find themselves "Lost in Space" over the months and years ahead. Now that Microsoft has won standards approval, the company will more aggressively push the format. For the majority of businesses depending on Office, a rough transition lies ahead. Anyone that remembers Office 97 file format changes will know the pain.
To its credit, Microsoft is trying to ease the transition pain through backward compatible Office 2007 file converters, which are available for versions 2000, XP and 2003. The company learned lessons from the Office 97 transitions that it applied to version 2007. Once installed, the converters let users of the three older Office programs open, edit and save files from version 2007.
Microsoft efforts aside, a period of file format confusion—likely lasting years—is near certainty. Many IT organizations will need to make some hard decisions about using and storing their vital information—the "crown jewels".
While Office 2007 has been in market since Nov. 30, 2006, new file formats have had limited enterprise impact because Microsoft only modestly pushed OOXML and few businesses had deployed the newer productivity suite. But ISO/IEC DIS 29500 and increasing Office 2007 adoption will lead to more OOXML push from Microsoft and greater number of OOXML files circulating among businesses. During the final stages of ISO ratification, I already saw a significant increase in publicly distributed Microsoft documents saved in Office 2007 formats.
Some problems:
- Suite transition. The majority of businesses use the oldest Office versions. According to Forrester Research: 60 percent Office XP, 20 percent Office 2000 and 7 percent Office 97. While Office 2007 adoption is brisk, particularly compared to sibling Windows Vista, there will still be a transition period of several years to Office 2007. File format problems are inevitable.
- Compatibility deployment. Office 2007 transition necessitates enterprise installation of Office 2007 converters—the "Compatibility Pack"—for older Office versions. The hardship will be greatest for small-to-medium businesses without centralized IT organizations and that don't regularly use Office Update.
- Office 2007 defaults. The new productivity suite automatically saves to OOXML. IT organizations must either deploy the converters or change defaults to the older binary file formats. Either way, someone has to touch the PCs, which can decrease the TCO benefits associated with Office.
Every IT organization using Office will have to ask the question "When?"—and more than once. When should the converters be installed? When should the organization move to Office 2007, if at all? Then there is the important "What?" Organizations must make hard decisions, some of them policy setting, about what to do with the majority of information stored in older Office binary file formats.
The Office 2007 and OOXML transition is bigger than today and tomorrow. Perhaps the bigger challenge is yesterday and how best to preserve crown jewels stored in .doc, .xl and .ppt files. U.S. regulatory requirements governing public companies demand that information be archived for future retrieval. Microsoft is done with the binary file formats. The company has an "official" standard. The timer tick, tick ticks to zero-life for the older binary formats.
Some recommendations to enterprises and their solution providers:
- Establish a here-and-now policy for Office 2007 file formats. If your company plans to deploy or already is migrating to the newer productivity suite, choose one file format scheme. While Microsoft wants to pull customers to OOXML, not all businesses should go there right away. For those organizations committing to OOXML, there must be clear policy and supporting technology for ensuring the format is used everywhere. That won't be easy for companies engaging outside customers. If your company adopts OOXML, but your customers don't there are sure to be communication compatibility problems.
- Make an Office file format policy for the past and future. This goes back to the "When?" and "What?" questions. Enterprises need to preserve their existing information. Right now, Microsoft and ISO make assurances about backward compatibility. But what happens in five years or 10? The file format decisions made today will affect the business' future operations. Triage is one approach—of making archived data regularly accessed part of the business information process. Larger enterprises should already be doing this anyway, although for some businesses Office 2007 will necessitate some changes to their information processes. The oldest information could be left where it is, converted to ISO/IEC DIS 29500 or saved in another archival format, such as ISO 19005-1:2005 (better known as PDF/A). But there must be a policy first.
- Re-evaluate archival and business process file formats. A format transition of this magnitude means most IT organizations will have to incur additional costs. These extra costs will negate some of the switching costs associated with other desktop and business process software and supporting file formats. If the organization has to incur the costs anyway, evaluate alternatives such as ISO/IEC 26300—ODF (OpenDocument Format)—or PDF. Even if the IT organization chooses to stick with Office and Microsoft file formats, the evaluation could be used as leverage when negotiating with Microsoft over software licensing fees.
By the way, I never liked the TV show "Lost in Space"—too cheesy for me.
Comments (12)
We won't be going near OOXML until ALL of our applications, utilities and business partners can support it.
It's not enough that you can read it in the current and previous version of Office.
We have Lotus Notes/Domino, and use built-in viewers quite often. We have Blackberry, so the viewers there need to work. We have Mac and Linux users, so their systems need to be able to accurately read and write OOXML too.
Then, of course, we have a very large customer base. We won't be moving away from Office 97 file formats until they can all read (and possibly write) our output too.
We have Visio and Project in our organization but it's "illegal" to distribute output from these applications in anything other than PDF because it disadvantages our clients who do not have these applications. The same rules will apply for OOXML.
Posted by Gavin Bollard | April 4, 2008 5:11 PM
as i see this is a Good move by Microsoft because Microsoft office is most used office suite and there are always file formats issues if all office suites use the one default format then this problem can be solved very easily
Posted by ajay | April 4, 2008 10:36 PM
"if all office suites use the one default format then this problem can be solved very easily"
ODF was already a standard before MS Office XML was even presented to ISO. Following your line of thinking, MS should have worked with ODF and helped improve it, instead of fighting against it.
Posted by RE:ajay | April 5, 2008 1:06 PM
So Microsoft railroaded it Office OOXML format through the ISO standards body. Certainly this proves that the power of MS is the money that it has. The corruption of the ISO process, is something that may come home to haunt Microsoft in the near future. Hopefully the EU will look into this matter and take action against the evil that MS did. So perhaps, the win of the standard, is only a short victory.
To me the "new standard" means nothing, as I refuse to use MS Office. OpenOffice is free, KOffice for Linux is free, and Abiword is free, there is no reason for me to use or pay for MS Office. I have given the "Borg" enough money, no more will I ever do so.
Posted by chips | April 5, 2008 7:55 PM
For me it means a big win for ODF and users in general. Microsoft had to recognize the need for a standard. That speaks so much of users recognizing the threat of lockin.
OOXML has a big uphill climb ahead. OOXML still has to address a great deal of issues and of course users have to get to use it. By that I don't mean buy Office 2007. I mean implementing their own OOXML readers. Something that doesn't look that easy (if in doubt take a look at the slow pace of OOXML tools from Microsoft itself). OOXML will be a moving target for sure. We all know Microsoft. It also appears that the said "dependencies" on MS products inside the XML specification makes it hard if not impossible to implement all features. So even when it is a standard it is short of being the best way to have long term storage. I'm confident the same users (governments and businesses) that demanded the usage of standards also see through this smoke screen and still choose the best standard for long term storage.
The big looser in all this ISO. People who usually don't take care for the process have looked now and have not found what they were expecting nor wanted to see. On the contrary they've seen (myself included) something that goes against what ISO stood for them.
Posted by Gerardo Tasistro | April 6, 2008 12:40 PM
ISO was set up to teach others to enforce a discipline on their subject matter and the tasks associated with their approach to the subject matter.
How ironic a company with more money than sense is the one to show ISO for what it actually is: a glass house with leaky caulk.
What a shame ISO was debauched in this way.
Posted by portuno | April 6, 2008 1:23 PM
I had long felt that the "fix was in" concerning OOXML. It is sad to see how Microsoft's dollars can buy ISO approval of a file format that only they understand. The interesting part to me is that Office 2007 does not implement IS 29500 and probably never will. It will also be interesting to see Microsoft legally challenged if and when they claim Office conforms to or meets the IS 29500 standard.
It is my view that governments interested in real and open standards should require the use and/or purchase of software that prevent vendor lock-in. Standards that are fully implemented by two or more independent entities should be preferred. That is the only real test if a standard is truly open.
I will still look to the ISO to set software and format standards, but when standards are important to me I will only buy and/or use software that meets the ISO's standards when it is provide from multiple and independent sources.
Posted by db | April 6, 2008 2:32 PM
Is the sentence "60 percent Office XP, 20 percent Office 2000 and 7 percent Office 97" a typo? Are you using XP and 2003 interchangeably? I cannot believe that XP has a larger market share than 2003, given XP's greater security vulnerabilities and shorter product lifecycle. I still know of a lot of people that use 2000 and 97, though:
1. It meets the needs of the casual user.
2. Older hand-me-down machines do not have enough horsepower to run the newer versions (particularly applicable to 97 deployments).
I am annoyed that Microsoft never got around to rolling all of its post-SP3 fixes into a single package labeled SP4. They are still issuing security updates for Office 2000. It's not too late....
Posted by Stratocaster | April 7, 2008 12:24 PM
Some sites claim that Office Open XML (OOXML) is too complicated, closed, and laced with threats to properly meet the requirements of an open specification. For example:
www.fanaticattack.com/2007/stuffing-it-up-odf-and-ooxml-document-format-battle.html
The link above mentions the "autoSpaceLikeWord95" formatting control as an supporting example. But I do not agree. I have reverse-engineered Word 95 and have found this formatting control to be clearly unambiguous and easy to implement. For the readers of Microsoft Watch, I offer the following flowchart of this function:
1. Infect the local machine with a virus.
2. Pass the virus along to every contact in your local address books.
3. Corrupt the document so that it is forever unreadable by any software application.
4. Crash.
Feel free to implement this function in any open source software you develop. See? OOXML isn't really hard to implement after all, now is it?
Posted by Philosopher | April 7, 2008 3:22 PM
Mr Wilcox:
thank you bringing memories on one of the best villains of all times, Dr.Zack Smith...
The report is Ok, although repeats to many times about compatibility issues... I think it lacked flesh... maybe it was because of the freshness of the new...
regards
Posted by Francisco Ulloa | April 7, 2008 5:28 PM
There's no reason to move to OOXML -- unless a company wants to kiss Micro$oft's rearend. OOXML is *NOT* an open or interoperable format. And it's not really a standard except in name.
The existing M$ Office file formats can still be used. Better yet, compabnies can move to truly open standard like ODF. Then they can use other alternative programs that can read these formats.
Posted by Maddog | April 9, 2008 6:14 AM
as i see this is a Good move by Microsoft because Microsoft office is most used office suite and there are always file formats issues if all office suites use the one default format then this problem can be solved very easily
Posted by islam | April 16, 2008 3:14 PM