Setting the Story Straight

My ever-skeptical father warned not to believe everything printed as news. A CNET News.com story published today shows my dad was right.

The story extols Microsoft’s efforts to bring Extensible Markup Language (XML) to Office 2003 and how this puts the “software giant--known for its hardball business tactics--in the position of seeing its success depend on how well it works with current and potential competitors.” If CNET News.com’s goal was overstatement, then this is one helluva story.

C`mon, Microsoft is renowned for its capability to partner with other companies, whether they are allies or competitors. To say Microsoft is dependent on competitors to make its Office 2003 XML strategy work is simply outrageously shortsighted. Consider that nine out of 10 PCs with a productivity suite run Office. With market might like this, Microsoft is in a strong position to drive technology development, putting other companies--including competitors--in a position to follow along.

The CNET News.com story also somewhat mischaracterizes Microsoft’s Office 2003 XML strategy. The story suggests that foresighted Microsoft recognized that many companies have valuable data locked on mainframes, with no easy way to distribute it to other systems. XML would be one way of extracting that back-end system data and making it more easily available to Windows PCs. It’s true that Microsoft’s XML support makes this possible--for companies buying Office 2003. But the XML strategy ignores a much larger problem created by Microsoft. Easily more companies face the problem of having their valuable corporate data locked in proprietary Microsoft Office file formats.

This is an issue Microsoft could have remedied with Office 2003 but, so far, has chosen to ignore. Just because data is in XML format or conforms to standards governing XML doesn’t ensure that information saved by one program is usable by another. If the XML uses schemas, or dialects, that other programs cannot read, the data may be all but useless for practice purposes. Example: Say, two people agree to speak the same language, but one starts using lingo the other one cannot understand. Any meaningful conversation would be difficult, if not impossible.

Unless Microsoft chooses to change its XML strategy, all but two versions of Office 2003 will use proprietary XML schemas, such as WordML. Technically, the same applies to the other two Office 2003 versions, both of which available to businesses. But there, the business has the option of creating user-defined schemas that offer some hope of unlocking data from Microsoft proprietary file formats.

Competitors Corel and Sun Microsystems are members of Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a group originally founded in 1993, which advocates interoperability among products using XML. Microsoft does not participate in OASIS, which is working on new standards that would allow the exchange of XML documents among various programs, including competing productivity suites. Right now, data exchange of Office 2003-genereated XML documents would mean that, in the majority of cases, just the raw, largely unformatted text would be readable by another program or productivity suite. The OASIS standard, if successful, would allow much of the rich formatting to remain, making the data more usable. But as previously stated, Microsoft doesn't support this interoperability project.

The CNET News.com story largely ignores or glosses over these important flaws in Microsoft’s Office 2003 XML strategy. All businesses considering adopting Office 2003 should seriously consider these XML limitations. Without question, Microsoft’s XML strategy would benefit some companies. Then again, Microsoft is not the only company leveraging XML as a conduit for retrieving data locked on mainframes. More importantly, Office 2003 XML support, in its current form, will do little to unlock Microsoft proprietary file-formatted data.

Microsoft’s continued dependence on proprietary file formats is unfortunate. Office’s rich feature set is plenty good enough to ward off upstarts. Microsoft really doesn’t need the data lock and key to hold on to Office users. If anything, Microsoft would benefit by proactively wooing customers by freeing up their data. This “open” approach might also help Microsoft’s image, boosting customer loyalty and Office sales. After all, who wants to feel obliged or dependent on another person or, in this case, a single vendor for access to a company’s most valuable corporate informational assets? Interoperability would also make it easier for customers using competing products to switch to Office, should they find the aforementioned rich features to be appealing.

Still, remember my father's warning. I stand by analysis. But with Office 2003 available as a widely-available beta, I encourage all businesses to test the software and see how much the XML support suits their needs.

Posted by Joe Wilcox at July 17, 2003 01:52 PM