What a pleasant surprise from Microsoft. Our company CIGNEX is heavily focused on Open Source so it’s hard to complement Microsoft (philosophically) but today’s announcement
(link takes you to blog entry of Brian Jones, program manager for Word
at Microsoft) about opening up Office in the next version is definitely
a bold and commendable move.

Basically, the new version of Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) will
store data in an XML format. This opens a whole bunch of possibilities
for developers to build solutions based on office applications. Besides
portability enhancements, the ability to manipulate content at the
server level is huge.

Many ISVs will love the fact that integrating their software with office will become a breeze moving forward.

It’s an innovative approach. Hats off to Microsoft!