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Office Open XML Receives Approval as an ISO/IEC International Standard

"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."

ISO announced this morning that Office Open XML has received approval as an ISO/IEC international standard. According to Microsoft, Open XML now joins HTML, PDF and ODF as ISO- and IEC-recognized open document format standards.

"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," said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft Corp. "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."

The open standard has gained broad adoption across the software industry for use on a variety of platforms - including Linux, Windows, Mac OS and Palm OS. Hundreds of independent software vendors and platform providers around the world -- such as Apple Inc., Corel Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., Microsoft and Novell Inc. - are developing solutions using Open XML according to a release from Microsoft.

More information about Open XML, as well as available solutions using the open standard specification, is available online.