Illustrating the company's commitment to interoperability

Apr 30, 2009 08:27 GMT  ·  By

The launch of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 earlier this week represents not only the evolution of one of the Redmond company's main cash cows, but also, in Microsoft's perspective, a step further in terms of interoperability. Office 2007 SP2 comes with support for no less than 18 document file formats. Tom Robertson, Associate General Counsel, Microsoft, revealed that the consistent standards support made Office 2007 SP2 best all rival productivity suites on the market. However, Robertson revealed that SP2 for Office 2007 was not about winning a productivity suite standards support measuring contest, but instead an invitation extended to other vendors to embrace interoperability at the same level as Microsoft.

“Enhancements to Office 2007 are the latest in a series of concrete steps we’ve taken in the pursuit of document-format interoperability. Earlier this year, we published technical documentation detailing our implementation of Ecma-376 (Open XML) and ODF 1.1 in Microsoft Office 2007. These notes provide a clear roadmap for anyone who wants to develop products that interoperate with our software, and are a useful reference for technical committees working to maintain these standards,” Robertson explained. “This was an unusual move for a vendor, but we believe providing this level of openness and transparency is a vital step in a larger, industry-wide effort to make document-format interoperability a reality.”

Office 2007 SP2 is designed to play nice with standards such as ODF, PDF, and XPS, among the 18 document file formats supported. Still, Robertson emphasized that extended support was by no means equivalent with the end of the interoperability journey. In this context he called for a holistic strategy among both software vendors and document-format implementers. Shared Stewardship involved continuous maintenance of standards among all vendors, but in the context of transparency, in which details about standards implementations were shared. And last but not least, Robertson underlined the need for comprehensive collaboration among all entities involved in standards support.

“The role of standards in the pursuit of interoperability is often the subject of spirited debate and impassioned rhetoric. We are happy to engage in these discussions, but it’s important to do more than talk—the work doesn’t end once standards are in place. We are committed to a collective, comprehensive approach to interoperability, and we encourage all vendors to embrace this vision,” Robertson concluded.

Download Office 2007 Service Pack 2 from Softpedia by clicking here.