Microsoft Commits to Greater Interoperability (
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The company has already released more than 30,000 pages of
documentation for its Windows client and server protocols on MSDN.Microsoft rolled out its big guns, including
CEO
Steve Ballmer and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, to underscore its
commitment to the set of new interoperability principles announced Feb. 21 that
are designed to increase the openness of its high-volume products and
drive greater interoperability.
In fact, Microsoft's long-term success depends on its ability to deliver a
software and services platform that is open and flexible and provides customers
and developers with choice, Ballmer said during a media teleconference.
In addition to the four new interoperability principles that the company
says will ensure open connections, promote data portability,
enhance support for industry standards, and foster a more open engagement
with customers and the industry, including open-source communities, Microsoft
released more than 30,000 pages of documentation for its Windows client and
server protocols.
This documentation of the
API and
communication protocols used by other Microsoft products was previously
only available under a trade secret license through the Microsoft WSPP (Work
Group Server Protocol Program) and the MCPP (Microsoft Communication Protocol
Program).
Read more here about Microsoft's claim to support open standards.
The company also plans to release protocol documentation for other products,
including Office 2007, over the coming months, and developers will not
need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access any of that
information, Ballmer said.
"These principles were taken of our own accord and, while they do
reflect our unique legal situation, they also reflect the challenges and
opportunities of this more connected, service-oriented world, where added-value services are done
at the other end of the wire," Ballmer said. "While this allows
others to take share from us, it also allows others to add value to our
products and offerings. There are risks that come with it but, on balance, it
is favorable to us and should add value for shareholders.”
These interoperability moves are also designed to further increase the openness of Microsoft's high-volume
products such as Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista and Office 2007, and to
drive greater interoperability and choice for its developers, partners and
competitors, Ballmer said.
He also announced the launch of the Open Source Interoperability Initiative,
which will provide a set of labs, technical content and other information
to promote more interoperability between Microsoft software and open-source
software.
In addition, a broad online interoperability forum will be created
to facilitate an ongoing dialogue with customers, developers and open-source
communities.
"We are also committed to living up to our legal responsibilities
around the world, and we think this announcement is entirely consistent with
those legal responsibilities," Ballmer said.
For his part, Ozzie said that when a new type of product or technology is
introduced, innovation tends to trump interoperability and data portability.
But as users put more of their data in these products, a new set of issues
emerges.
"As an industry we have progressively learned that documents and data
have a lifetime that frequently spans well beyond the lifetime of any
application used to create it, and issues such as document preservation and
portability have become vital concerns for customers," Ozzie said.
Also, as a direct by-product of the Internet age, every product has become
interconnected in some way to most everything else, so interoperability between
systems has also become a vital concern, he said.
