Microsoft needs to recover from the battle with the open source software that compete with its Office suite. Also there were some complains because it does not natively support open standards. Thus, the company announced to add three new formats in the future release of Office 2007. The three file formats are: the Open Document Format (ODF), Portable Document Format (PDF), and XML Paper Specification (XPS).
The ODF format was popularized by the rival OpenOffice.org which offers the same productivity suite as Office 2007. Because the ODF format became popular in governments and schools, Microsoft decided to release a service pack for cross-compatibility.
"We have heard from customers and governments that they would like to see us do this. Now is the time to announce this support. It's also important to announce this now because we want to get involved in the maintenance of ODF," explained Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft.
The SP2 for Office 2007 will come probably in the first half of 2009. Until then the users must work with add-ons and plug-ins that permit interoperability.
via Tech Report
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