Well, I have finally worked my way through last week's 37 page report released by the Burton Group recommending Microsoft's Office Open eXtended markup language (OOXML) over the Open Document Format (ODF) in the format standards battle. I don't know if I agree with the report that "It's a story that has many elements appropriate for a James Bond movie..." but even if more mundane than the authors suggest, it's a matter of considerable importance to CIOs responsible for setting lasting, useful standards in their enterprise.

As the level of vitriol and debate on this matter rises it provides some indication of just how important the topic has become. Organizations have been generating significant amounts of electronic data for nearly forty years now and have reached the point where the helter-skelter adoption of file formats in years past has become a real impediment to making use of that data in the present. A bit like the Y2K problem, the notion of incompatible file formats was one which snuck up on the computer industry, recognized by few and avoided by almost no one.

The Burton study does a good job of examining the issues that have lead to this debate. Not just the need for data preservation beyond the horizon of a vendor supported format, but also the new impetus for open formats to decrease the likelihood of data breaches from hidden meta-data, are forcing business today to adopt new standards. As with all such times of change, this one won't be peaceful.

ODF supporters have been angered by the study, but Burton's willingness to call a spade a spade shouldn't put anyone out; observing that the current market is dominated by Microsoft Office and that many businesses will unwittingly allow the format standard to be decided for them by virtue of their knee-jerk upgrades to Office 2007 is simply accurate, not malevolent. Similarly, the idea that many users appreciate the flexibility offered by the complexity of proprietary Office file formats may be lamentable from a standards point of view, but it's still true and a factor that can't be ignored in evaluating the market. The ODF rebuttal that simplicity is their design goal is laudable from a standards perspective, but it has little to do with what users actually require in terms of usability.

On the other hand it seems excessively optimistic on Burton's part to conclude that while OOXML will likely succeed, Microsoft will "play well with others" around the format, not exploiting any potential IP advantages to restrict competition with its own products. As mindful as the analysts had been of historical cases when looking at Microsoft and standards adoption, they seem to have ignored all those situations where Microsoft has played nicely until its standard becomes the standard, and then moves in to take advantage of the fact. They do, however, inadvertently contradict themselves on the point, suggesting that Microsoft has already outspent any potential competitors in exploiting the format and that no challengers will emerge to be squashed. I'm not sure that pre-empting competition is really any better than subverting it after it emerges, but it does at least indicate increasing sophistication on Microsoft's part strategically.

Many of the rebuttals to the paper engage in classic FOSS geek technical minutiae and miss the thrust of the paper entirely. It's not that either are necessarily incorrect, they are simply discussing the matter on different playing fields. Although such responses can sometimes be constructive and informative as to the technical issues involved in the debate, I have come to view such point-by-point rebuttals as a sign that no persuasive overall counter-point to the main theme can be found, even by people looking very, very hard for one.

Although most of the ruckus over the paper has focused on the prediction that OOXML will beat out ODF, the more intriguing and meaningful conclusion is in fact that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) model, built on open and broadly accepted web standards already in broad use, will in fact "...be more influential and pervasive than ODF and OOXML." This implicit acknowledgment that the SaaS delivery model will dominate productivity and document storage applications is less supportive of Microsoft's approaches than many of the documents detractors care to acknowledge and suggests the entire debate is essentially a sideshow.

I don't think that anyone should debate that OOXML is preferable at least to existing proprietary Office formats and the recommendation to migrate those older formats over is probably the most realistic step for most CIOs. On the other hand, CIOs who are truly concerned with data preservation and open standards need to take a hard look at Microsoft's historical business practices and the remaining questions hanging over OOXML and ask themselves if it's worth making such a major transition to a format that is fraught with the same potential for vendor (rather than consumer) control in the future. SaaS options, it's worth noting, hardly escape this issue, so regardless of the very real potential that SaaS will eclipse any of the stand-alone office applications that are currently involved in this debate, it's still going to be necessary to pick a format for long-term, corporate control of vital data and documents.