Microsoft announced the launch of its Document Interoperability Initiative, which is aimed at promoting user choice among document formats and expanded opportunity for developers, partners and competitors. On 6 March 2008, Microsoft hosted in Cambridge a number of independent software vendors (ISVs), including Novell Inc., Mark Logic Corp., Quickoffice Inc., DataViz Inc. and Nuance Communications Inc., to launch this collaborative, community-based initiative. The Cambridge event was intended as the first in a series of labs around the world that will bring together vendors to test interoperability between their implementations of well-known document formats, and between implementations of different formats. The Cambridge lab will test interoperability between existing implementations of Microsoft Office Open XML Formats and the Open Document Format (ODF) on a variety of platforms and devices including Mac OS X Leopard, iPhone, Palm OS, Symbian OS, Linux and Windows Mobile.

The 1.1 release of a translator between ODF and Open XML for Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet) and Microsoft PowerPoint (presentation) applications was also announced. Microsoft has committed to support future releases of the translator taking advantage of the improvements in Microsoft Office converter APIs announced as part of the interoperability principles on Feb. 21 to provide a better integrated experience for customers to open and save ODF files. These APIs and the guidance provided by the OpenXML-ODF Translator project will also make it easier for users to take advantage of other document formats, such as UOF and DAISY.

Read the complete announcement from Microsoft.