Gartner: Open XML “would have been a better choice than ODF as the single standard”

Gartner has published a report about document format standards. They have pointed out a number of key challenges related to document format standards, and illustrate clearly some of the issues that remain from the Open XML and ODF ratification waves.

This report offers several interesting conclusions about the utilization of document formats and exactly how they are relevant to a productivity situation. I have mentioned before (and strongly concur with their point of view) that people use products, and making decisions about user productivity certainly involves a lot more than looking at the list of supported file formats.

There isn't really a need to offer quotes from the report, it is written plainly and offers some candid views on the politics, the role of Microsoft and the reality of document exchange.

It underscores the work we have yet to do on improving document interoperability.