REDMOND, Washington, August 27 /PRNewswire/ --

- Interoperability and choice are key factors driving strong Open XML 
adoption in Europe and the US.

IT managers at large organisations are increasingly interested in
employing XML-based standards, including Open XML, among their document
standards, according to a study of US and European organisations commissioned
by Microsoft Corp. The results of the survey, which polled 200 government and
private-sector organisations to better understand which factors drive
adoption of open document standards, are available in an IDC white paper.

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Survey respondents included key influencers as well as those charged with
supporting document standards in 200 organisations (100 in the US and 100 in
Europe). Fifty organisations with more than 250 employees were selected from
the public sector, another 50 from the commercial sector.

Functional approaches to standards adoption were evident in the survey
results, with the majority of respondents citing interoperability between
productivity tools, long-term archiving, and ease of transition from an
existing base of documents to a new standard as the primary criteria used to
evaluate organisation wide adoption of a given standard.

Other key takeaways from this research include the following:

-- Large organisations with diverse business needs prefer multiple
       document standards.
    -- Although IT managers appear to strongly prefer a single standard to
       reduce cost and complexity of implementation, line-of-business
       managers closer to the daily needs of business support the desire for
       multiple document standards.
    -- The standards Portable Document Format (PDF), Open XML and
       OpenDocument Format (ODF) are all in use today, with PDF viewed as the
       dominant standard and Open XML demonstrating "more traction in the
       market compared to other XML-based standards."
    -- Companies in Europe with an interest in Open XML expect to be piloting
       or fully deploying the standard a year from today. Those interested in
       ODF are more likely to be in the "consideration" phase rather than
       piloting or fully deploying it within that same time frame.



"Pragmatic business needs are clearly on top of mind when it comes to
standards adoption, both within the public and private sector," said Per
Andersen, managing director of IDC Nordic. "The survey results reveal that
multiple document standards are deployed today, and that companies see the
transition of the existing base of documents as one of the most important
criteria when selecting a document standard."

"The survey validates that organisations evaluate and implement XML-based
document formats based on a complex set of criteria," said Jean Paoli,
general manager of Interoperability and XML Architecture at Microsoft.
"Although we are glad to see strong adoption of Open XML, we realise that
individual organisational requirements vary, and interoperability remains
critical. Therefore, we continue to promote the development of tools that
offer customers a choice in which formats they can use."

A full copy of the "Adoption of Document Standards" white paper is
available for download at http://www.openxmlcommunity.org/momentum.aspx.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise
their full potential.

About Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)

Microsoft has operated in EMEA since 1982. In the region Microsoft
employs more than 12,000 people in 60 subsidiaries, delivering products and
services in 138 countries and territories.

Web site: http://www.microsoft.com