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Compatibility Matters: The Lessons of Massachusetts
This document discusses the primary reason ODF failed in Massachusetts: compatibility with the MSOffice productivity environment, and, the billions of binary documents in use by MSOffice bound workgroups and the business processes so important to them.
Compatibility matters: The Lessons of Massachusetts
Gary Edwards's List: Compatibility matters - The lessons of Massachusetts are many. Application level "compatibility" with existing MSOffice desktops and workgroups is vital. Format level "compatibility" with the legacy of billions of binary documents is vital. And "ecosystem" compatibility with the MSOffice productivity environment.
Compatibility matters - WebSlides
A collection of Web articles and discussions concerning Compatibility and the Lessons of Massachusetts
Cisco "Thinking About" Going Up Against Microsoft Office and Google Apps
Knock me over with a feather. Now comes news that Cisco wants to challenge Microsoft Office and Google Apps.
Paul Smalera of Business Insider questions the wisdom of this initiative, insisting that Cisco must know it can't beat either MSOffice or Google Apps.
Maybe Cisco is fishing for help? Where is that wave-maker application Jason and Florian are said to be working on? :)
Excerpt: Cisco VP Doug Dennerline told reporters, the company is "thinking about" adding document drafting and sharing to WebEx, which already features instant messaging, online meeting and email services.
The better MSOffice alternative is the most compatible: SoftMaker Office bests OpenOffice.org
Article discussing the importance of office suite alternatives having a high level of comaptibility with MSOffice, the MSOffice binary formats, and the MSOffice productivity environment. ComputerWorld's Randall Kennedy has done exhaustive work comparing the conversion quality of MSOffice documents from two alternative office suites: Softmaker Office and OpenOffice.
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Finally! Someone who gets it. For an office suite to be considered as an alternative to MSOffice, it must be designed with multiple levels of compatibility. It's not just that the "feature sets" that must be comparable. The guts of the suite must be compatible at both the file format level, and the environment level.
Randall put's it this way; "It's the ecosystem stupid".
The reason ODF failed in Massachusetts is that neither OpenOffice nor OpenOffice ODF are designed to be compatible with legacy and existing MSOffice applications, binary formats, and, the MSOffice productivity environment. Instead, OOo and OOo-ODF are designed to be competitively comparable.
As an alternative to MSOffice, OpenOffice and OpenOffice ODF cannot fit into existing MSOffice workgroups and producitivity environments. Because it s was not designed to be compatible, OOo demands that the environment be replaced, rebuilt and re-engineered. Making OOo and OOo-ODF costly and disruptive to critical day-to-day business processes.
The lesson of Massachusetts is simple; compatibility matters. Conversion of workgroup/workflow documents from the MSOffice productivity environment to OpenOffice ODF will break those documents at two levels: fidelity and embedded "ecosystem" logic.
Fidelity is what most end-users point to since that's the aspect of the document conversion they can see. However, it's what they can't see that is the show stopper. The hidden side of workgroup/workflow documents is embedded logic that includes scripts, macros, formulas, OLE, data bindings, security settings, application specific settings, and productivity environment settings. Breaks these aspects of the document, and you stop important business processes bound to the MSOffice productivity environment.
There is no such thing as an OpenOffice productivity environment designed to be a compatible alternative to the MSOffice productivity environment.
Another lesson from Massachusetts is that "rip-out-and-replace" is both costly and disruptive. If it can be done. Amazingly, the City of Munich has been working on the rip and replace of MSOffice for over six years, and they are reporting that the project is only 60% complete.
There are alternatives to rip and replace. The Massachusetts choice was to re-purpose MSOffice using an ODF plug-in approach - a clone of the Microsoft Compatibiltiy Pack if you will.
Another alternative is to design from the ground up, a highly compatible office suite that can slide into these MSOffice bound environments without show stopping disruption. Softmaker Office is not alone in this approach, with Evermore Office and ThinkFree Office also proving that a very high level of compatiblitiy with MSOffice, the MSOffice binary formats, and the MSOffice productivity environment, is possible.
Excerpt: "In the kingdom of business productivity, Microsoft Office reigns supreme. Its dominating position atop the word processing, spreadsheet, and presentations heap seems virtually unassailable. Its file formats define an industry, and its component applications are often synonymous with the underlying tasks they perform. ......"
"There's no doubt about it: Office's roots run deep -- deeper, even, than its host OS, Microsoft Windows. People talk about switching Windows versions all the time. However, few souls are willing to walk away from their current version of Office for fear of losing interoperability with their peers, a fact that makes dislodging this sprawling, well-entrenched entity all the more daunting -- though many alternative productivity suites and SaaS offerings continue to try......" - garyedwards on 2009-06-30
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Frankly, from Microsoft's perspective, the danger may have been overstated. Though the free open source crowd talks a good fight, the truth is that they keep missing the real target. Instead of investing in new features that nobody will use, the team behind OpenOffice should take a page from the SoftMaker playbook and focus on interoperability first. Until OpenOffice works out its import/export filter issues, it'll never be taken seriously as a Microsoft alternative.
More troubling (for Microsoft) is the challenge from the SoftMaker camp. These folks have gotten the file-format compatibility issue licked, and this gives them the freedom to focus on building out their product's already respectable feature set. I wouldn't be surprised if SoftMaker got gobbled up by a major enterprise player in the near, thus creating a viable third way for IT shops seeking to kick the Redmond habit.
- This quote is an excerpt from the article :) - on 2009-06-30
Why is Microsoft Office so hard to kill? | InfoWorld
This article compliments the previous publication, "The better Office Alternative - Softmaker Office". Good stuff!\n\nExcerpt: "It's the question that vexes free open source software advocates and commercial competitors around the globe: Why is Microsoft Office so difficult to dislodge from its perch atop the IT heap? Is it the exclusive bundling deals? The deep Software Assurance entrenchment? Steve Ballmer's backroom deal with the devil?"\n\n"The answer, of course, is none of the above (though some evidence of a Microsoft-Hell alliance exists). Rather, it's the Office ecosystem -- the vast library of third-party add-ons and vertical solutions built (with copious encouragement from Microsoft) on Office's extensive programmatic model -- that makes Microsoft's suite so hard to kill."
Amazing Stuff: ThinkFree Office Compatibility with MSOffice compared to OpenOffice Compatibility
This is amazing stuff. With all the talk about OpenOffice ODF compatibility problems with existing MSOffice productivity environments and documents, this comparison is stunning.
I stumbled across this <b>Compatibility Comparison</b> reading this article: <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/thinkfree_only_complete_android_office_suite.php">ThinkFree Set to Launch The First Complete Android Office Suite</a>. <a href="http://www.dataviz.com/products/documentstogo/android/">Documents To Go</a> is currently the only provider of Word and Excel documents on Android.
The ThinkFree Office comparisons to OpenOffice cover a number of familiar compatibility issues, with layout at the top of the list.
<b>ThinkFree Write 3.5 vs OpenOffice Writer 3.0</b>
<i>".....When using a word processor to create documents, you really shouldn’t have to worry about whether your client will be able to see the document as you intended."</i>
<i>".... However, if you use a low-cost solution like OpenOffice, you should be prepared for frustrations and disappointments....."</i>
In Office SP2, Microsoft manages to reduce interoperability | TalkBack on ZDNet
<b>ODF is important. So What Went Wrong?</b>
Response to Jeremy Allison:
Having participated in a number of government
pilot studies, I must say that you are right;
government officials do care about ODF. They
really want it to work. But they also had
expectations that ODF simply wasn't designed
for.
What they expected ODF to be was an open
technology based on highly-structured XML
markup that was application, platform, and
vendor-independent, backward compatible,
universally interoperable, and importantly, Web
ready.
That is not ODF nor is it OOXML. In fact, the
closest thing we have for meeting these
expectations is an ajax-webkit style
HTML+ (HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS
jQuery, etc.). ODF is highly structured, but it
is not application-independent. .....
ODF1.2 Interoperability Proposal
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Part of the sad but enduring "History of Failed ODF Interoperability Attempts". This particular message is dated November 20th, 2006.
The OpenDocument Foundation was notified a week earlier that the "benefactor" ODF Community group Louis Gutierrez had asked IBM and Oracle to put together in Massachusetts had failed. This was the group Louis formed around the da Vinci plugin and our InfoSet APi.
Florian has been hired by Novell, and his first day on the job he finds out about the IBM - Novell deal with Microsoft. Now he has write the MOOXML plugin for OpenOffice using the MS-CleverAge Translator Project work. So he writes this message to the ODF TC [office] list.
The interoperability enhancements Florian suggests are based on the <interoperability eXtensions> submitted in August to the ODF Metadata SC for consideration.
The first element in this list tha tFlorian chose to tackle related to "Lists". He called it the "LIst Override Proposal". This became the now infamous "List Enhancement Proposal War" that resulted in Sun having OASIS boot out the Foundation.
Such is life in big vendor ODF'dom
~ge~
- garyedwards on 2007-06-04
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- From: "Florian Reuter" <freuter@novell.com>
- To: <office@lists.oasis-open.org>
- Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:03:24 +0100
Subject: Suggested ODF1.2 items
<!--X-Subject-Header-End-->
<!--X-Head-of-Message-->
<!--X-Head-of-Message-End-->
<!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin-->
<!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End-->
<!--X-Body-of-Message-->Suggested enhancement for OpenDocument V1.2
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MSOffice (6)- odf (5)
- interoperability (5)
- openoffice (5)
- ooxml (4)
- massachusetts (2)
- softmaker-Office (2)
- iso (2)
- document-wars (1)
- lessons-of-massachusetts (1)
- cisco (1)
- wave-maker (1)
- bound-business-processes (1)
- productivity-environment (1)
- MSOffice-ecosystem (1)
- unified-productivity (1)
- ThinkFree (1)
- oasis (1)
- opendocument (1)
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