Software major Microsoft on Wednesday said that it has won the global international standards designation for its open document format Office Open XML, a file format specification for electronic documents, on the lines of ODF, HTML and PDF.
While an official confirmation is still awaited, Microsoft has reportedly garnered votes of ?over 75% of total representatives belonging to various?countries. ?With 86% of voting national bodies supporting ratification, there is overwhelming support for Open XML,? said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft Corp.
Open Document Format (ODF ) was the first interchangeable document format to get ISO approval in 2006, and supporters of the format used the exclusive ISO endorsement to pitch the technology.
Earlier India had also voted against Microsoft’s file format OXML. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) had backed ODF, also supported by IBM and Sun Microsystems, rival groups of the Redmond-based software giant. ODF was the first interchangeable document format to get ISO approval in 2006, and the supporters used the exclusive ISO endorsement to pitch the technology. However, Indian IT majors like Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Infosys, had voted for Open XML.
According to reports, the decision will allow Microsoft to bid for lucrative government contracts that require vendors to use open electronic formats. Microsoft has been lobbying hard at International Standards Organization(ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission, the two Geneva-based standard bodies which coordinate the approval process. The OXML format has gained broad adoption for use on a variety of platforms? including Linux, Windows, and Palm OS. Official confirmation of the decision ?from the?two?Geneva-based bodies was still awaited.