Microsoft Office has been defeated by Massachusetts' stubbornness, the MIT's home-state deciding that all of the official documents have to be saved from now on in the OpenDocument electronic format.

The Massachusetts officials announced at the beginning of this year's September that they intend to introduce this decision and since then, Microsoft has been trying to make them change their mind, warning that switching to another Office suite would require time and money.

Peter Quinn, Massachusetts' Chief Information Officer, announced that other changes, except the adapting of the state's 50,000 governmental computers to save documents in OpenDocument format, won't be necessary.

Several companies, including IBM, backed Massachusetts's decision of implementing the format, but some analysts warned that in this way, many users will be forced to migrate to applications like StarOffice or OpenOffice.

Microsoft hasn't released yet any official announcement regarding Massachusetts' decision.