British schools face the decision whether to switch to Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 or to migrate to other products.The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) dissuades British schools to migrate to the next generation of Microsoft Technology. Although the interim report was considerably watered down the report it gives insights about potential shortcomings of the products and the interoperability through converters. It also addresses conversion problems between different generations of Microsoft Office. While Becta are not commenting on the technical merits of either the existing international document standard (ODF) or the proposed second international document standard (OOXML), they remain convinced that multiple incompatible international standards that address essentially the same area of functionality are not in the interests of educational users. It will introduce confusion, the report warns.
Becta proposes that schools and colleges should normally insist that suppliers provide an office productivity suite that is capable
of opening, editing and saving documents in the ODF format and setting ODF as the default file format.
• recognising the limitations regarding Microsoft’s implementation of the ODF standard and the limited uptake of Microsoft’s new Office 2007 file format, we recommend that in the short term users should continue to use the older Microsoft binary formats (such as .doc)
The old binary format is ironically better supported than the new open XML format. Although the recommendation delays ODF adoption because Microsoft is reluctant to provide appropriate support for the international standard Becta's anger is driven by the OOXML document format. It is recommended to you to consider the full report. These excerpts give a slight impression of the tendency of the report concerning OOXML/ODF. It is as blunt as you may get in the United Kingdom:
1.16 Microsoft has not moved to address the interoperability concerns identified in our interim report. Office 2007 still does not effectively support the international ODF document standard. It has continued to seek approval for a second international document standard based on its Office 2007 file formats – a move which has attracted considerable controversy.
1.17 Microsoft has argued that the ODF standard does not adequately address the needs of users regarding access to documents stored via previous versions of Office, and that a further international standard is required. While the need for a second standard remains unresolved, it is clear that increasingly Microsoft’s competitors are using the existing ODF standard as their key file format.
1.18 We remain concerned about the approach taken to supporting ODF in Office 2007. While the product includes the functionality to read virtually every other relevant file format ‘out of the box’, the processes for dealing with ODF files are very cumbersome. We identified ten steps that users would need to take in order to locate and install the converter that gives Office 2007 the ability to access ODF files and note that the arrangements for opening and saving ODF files in Microsoft Office 2007 are not intuitive in that they deviate from the normal approach familiar to users. We believe that these arrangements present sufficient technical difficulties for the majority of users to make them disinclined to use competitor products and this may weaken competition.
1.19 We have discussed with Microsoft on a number of occasions its rationale for not providing effective integrated interoperability with the ODF document standard. We did not find the various explanations we received convincing.
1.20 We believe that the barriers Microsoft has placed in the way of users who want to use the file format that is increasingly common in competitor products will have the effect of limiting the use of such products. The interoperability that Microsoft makes available in Office 2007 for competitor products is less than it makes available for its own family of products. We have complained to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) that this puts competition at risk and is an abuse of a dominant position by Microsoft. The OFT is considering our complaint.
Strategic lesson learned
It is important now to take the relevant strategic steps to avoid losing permanently the benefits which should flow from open standards. Becta supports the recommendation of the recent pan-European e-government services committee (PEGSCO) that ‘suppliers should develop applications that can handle all relevant international standards, leaving the choice to their customers as to what format will be used “by default”.’
Becta
- http://www.becta.org.uk
- British Educational Communications and Technology Agency: Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 Final report with recommendations on adoption, deployment and interoperability (pdf, 40 pages)