AFTER months of intense debate and lobbying, the Open Office XML (OOXML) protocol has finally been approved as an ISO/IEC International Standard.

It now joins Portable Document Format (PDF), hyper text markup language (HTML) and open document format (ODF) among the ranks of document formats.

To recap, Microsoft first achieved standardisation of OOXML through the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA). But in the subsequent ISO standardisation process, the Microsoft-spearheaded format was initially disapproved in a “fast-track vote” that ended last September, receiving over 3,500 comments.

A second ISO vote took place during the final week of February 2008. Seventy-five per cent of nations belonging to the ISO/IEC joint technical committee said “yes” to standardisation, where only 14 per cent said “no”.

Approval required two-thirds of the votes cast to be positive, while only one-quarter of them could be negative. After the vote though, nations were given until March 29 to reconsider. As none of the countries changed their votes then, the ISO declared OOXML to be an official standard last week.

For supporters of OOXML, they need to move into the implementation phase, now that the standard has been ratified.
Microsoft, in particular, will be looked upon by many to take the lead.

According to David Mitchell, Ovum’s SVP IT Research, “The standard that Microsoft initially submitted through ECMA has been revised by the standards process – generally improving it on the way. As such, they will need to update their existing products and planned future products to support the format that was actually ratified.

“Microsoft will also need to provide tools to convert the existing Office 2007 formats into the new Open XML standard.

“Other independent software vendors like Apple, IBM, and Sun will also need to put their plans in place to support this standard – it would not be wise for the developer community to ignore it,” Mitchell said.


The decision has been made but the ODF-OOXML saga is by no means over, added Mitchell.

“Those who were protesting and opposing the Open XML progress through the standards process will still oppose it. To begin with, there have been challenges to the process – and these will continue.”

The neutrals most probably would welcome the decision, as they reckon software developers will now have to compete on the basis of the intrinsic merits of their products, rather than using a standards body lockout.