The Next Step in Openness and Interoperability

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This morning, Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia, Brad Smith and Steve Ballmer  are announcing important changes to our technology and business practices that will enhance the interoperability of our products and expand the technical information we share with developers, partners, customers, and competitors.

The changes we’re announcing today are outlined in four interoperability principles that apply to our high-volume business products – Windows Vista (and the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 – and future versions of these products. The four principles are:

1) Ensuring open connections

2) Data portability

3) Enhanced support for industry standards

4) Open engagement with the industry.

Starting today, we will begin implementing these principles in our product development and documentation process, and in our industry and community outreach. For example, we will begin making more of the application programming interfaces (APIs) and protocols in these products available on our Web site and accessible to developers without requiring a license or fee. We will also expand the functionality of Office 2007 – enabling developers and users to take advantage of additional document formats. 

In addition, we are launching an Open Source Interoperability Initiative and we are creating an online Interoperability Forum to foster dialogue with customers, developers, and the open source community. 

You can read more about these principles and the steps we’ll take to implement them at https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/interoperability/default.mspx

Today’s announcement reflects both the increasing customer requirement for interoperability and the changed legal landscape of the IT industry. We firmly believe that, subject to the review of the European Commission, these steps bring us into compliance with the interoperability portions of the September 2007 judgment of the European Court of First Instance. And as always, we are firmly committed to fulfilling our legal responsibilities everywhere we do business throughout the world. 

While these changes will create additional work for some development groups, they will also open the door to new opportunities for Microsoft. Just as our early success with developers and partners was driven by the openness and flexibility of our platform, our ongoing commitment to interoperability will help expand the ecosystem of partners and developers who use our technology to meet the needs of their customers. In the process, we will lay the foundation for long-term growth and success for our company.

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