Microsoft Interoperability Bridges & Labs Center

The Interoperability Bridges & Labs Center is an example of Microsoft's commitment to respond to the needs of customers running mixed source environments. The online resources are designed to build “bridges between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies.” In this regard, the focus falls on making Microsoft proprietary solutions play nice with open-source software. The Redmond company stressed that the center was dedicated to its technical collaborative efforts with not just customers and partners but also open-source communities, all designed to boost interoperability (via ActiveWin).

“The Center is run by the Microsoft Interoperability Strategy Group working with many other teams at Microsoft, with customers input and with the community at large to build technical bridges, labs and solutions to improve interoperability in mixed IT environments,” reads an excerpt from the About section. “In this site, you will find a live directory of these technical and freely downloadable interoperability Bridges with related content such as demos, technical articles, helpful best practices from the projects leads and sharing technical guidance. You will also find Labs, which contain technical guidance explaining how to best achieve interoperability in specific product scenarios.”

The website features in the left hand side pane a collection of projects set up to drive interoperability between Microsoft products and open-source solutions. Customers will be able to easily access software such as Apache-POI OpenXML Java API, Azure Ruby SDK for .NET Services, Office Binary (doc, xls, ppt) to Open XML Translator, PHP Virtual Earth Tool Kit and even WSRP producer for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. But also the latest posts from the interoperability Team.

“The vast majority of the projects are run as Open Source projects with third party and community members and released under a broad BSD license, or other licenses such as MS-PL or Apache, so that our customers, partners and the community can use them in many open and broad reaching scenarios,” the company added.