Although nothing is official yet, Microsoft has jumped the gun and announced that the Ecma Office Open XML document format has been approved as an ISO/IEC standard. The vote of approval marks the end of no less than a 14-month period of review for Office Open XML in the process of becoming an ISO standard. Open XML was submitted for evaluation to the Joint Technical Committee of the International Standardization Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) by Ecma International.

"With 86 percent of voting national bodies supporting ratification, there is overwhelming support for Open XML. This outcome is a clear win for the customers, technology providers and governments that want to choose the format that best meets their needs and have a voice in the evolution of this widely adopted standard," stated Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft.

Microsoft is citing publicly available information as the source of the Open XML standardization, even though the final vote failed to be formally made public. The Redmond company said that Open XML received the support of over 86% of all voting national body members. The native format of the Office 2007 System only needed 75% of voted in order to be approved for ISO/IEC standardization. In this manner, Open XML's journey to becoming an open document format comes to an end, as the standard joins HTML, PDF and ODF.

"The input from technical experts, customers and governments around the world has greatly improved the Open XML specification and will make it even more useful to developers and customers. Once it is formally approved, we are committed to supporting this specification in our products, and we will continue to work with standards bodies, governments and the industry to promote greater interoperability and innovation," Robertson added.