IBM Slams Microsoft, Calls OOXML "Inferior"

cristarol sends word that Microsoft's accusation, that IBM has sabotaged Redmond's attempts to have the Office OpenXML format approved by the ISO, has drawn a heated response from IBM. Ars Technica has the story. "'IBM believes that there is a revolution occurring in the IT industry, and that smart people around the world are demanding truly open standards developed in a collaborative, democratic way for the betterment of all,' IBM VP of standards and OSS Bob Sutor told Ars. 'If "business as usual" means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we're proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior.'"

Comments

Battle of giants

[siyavash]

One big corporation bashing another... Get your popcorns and watch the show. Personally, I prefer Godzilla... yyyyyiii... *sound of Godzilla*

Re:Battle of giants

[Anonymous Coward]

Godzilla throws chairs?

Re:Battle of giants

[Ngarrang]

IBM, despite having lost the OS battle, will win this one. They are the 1600lb gorilla. Their influence in the industry and deep and wide and should never be underestimated. Microsoft would do well not to make an enemy of them.

Re:Battle of giants

[morgan_greywolf]

IBM, despite having lost the OS battle, will win this one. They are the 1600lb gorilla. Their influence in the industry and deep and wide and should never be underestimated. Microsoft would do well not to make an enemy of them. Oh, I think it's much, much too late for that. IBM and Microsoft have been at odds since the whole OS/2 joint development agreement fallout. The only thing nobody seems to notice much around here is that IBM has been winning.

Not much for megacorps, but...

[CarpetShark]

I'm not really much for liking megacorps, but it's good to see one -- IBM in this case, for the moment -- that's on the right side.

Re:Not much for megacorps, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems pretty logical to me.

Microsoft mostly gets money from its software, they thus need to make sure they will keep selling it. Then they can make even more money with consulting when customers are locked in.

IBM mostly gets money from consulting services, they thus need "open" environments where they can charge high price for advice vs software.

So what you think is the right side is actually the opportunistic side to them. This is still the right side for us though.

we've come a long way

[jacquesm]

When a company that used to be a monopolist is now one of the staunchest defenders of openness, I really do hope there is no hidden agenda here.

IBM used to make overpriced hardware sold at tremendous profit until that little upstart microsoft came along and elegantly used their own weight against them in a classic game of corporate judo. It may just be that IBM still smarts from that or it may be that they've really 'seen the light'. This is good news, personally I'd like to see the transparency of these committees and their members go up a notch or two, too much potential for procedural trickery still exists.

Re:we've come a long way

[pegdhcp]

(Semi) official Microsoft view worded as

IBM is solely responsible for ISO's recent decision to deny OOXML fast-track approval. "Let's be very clear," Jean Paoli, Microsoft's senior director of XML technology, told ZDNet. "It has been fostered by a single company--IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."

One wonders if Microsoft officials do not recognize their own organization as a "single company". Although there are claims of MS statehood, I prefer such ideas remain in the "jokingly funny" domain.

Re:we've come a long way

[morgan_greywolf]

When a company that used to be a monopolist is now one of the staunchest defenders of openness, I really do hope there is no hidden agenda here. Of course there's a hidden agenda. Except that it's not so hidden. IBM's business model currently revolves around services, rather than products. It's in IBM's best interests to have a diverse set of vendors in the IT industry to choose from rather than a monopoly and a monoculture. Microsoft is also in the services business, but their services revolve around their specific products, whereas IBM is a vendor that takes a more ecumenical view.

IOW, IBM's 'ulterior' motive is profit, and their profit goals happen to be in alignment with what's best for the IT industry and the greater IT community.

Re:we've come a long way

[Bert64]

Actually, It was the likes of Compaq who were responsible for the opening of the PC compatible hardware market. Microsoft are responsible for fighting tooth and nail to keep the software closed, while trying to benefit from the open hardware.

Re:we've come a long way

[RMH101]

IBM now sell overpriced services sold at tremendous profit. They'd much rather have open standards that they can use, and profit from consulting you to death wrapping a service layer around them.

Re:we've come a long way

[CmdrGravy]

Exactly and it's my suspicion that a company whos business model is actually in line with their customers requirements is going to be more successful than one whos business model basically relies on customers behaving in a way which suits Microsoft and attempts to enforce that behaviour by removing the customers choices.

Re:we've come a long way

[Anonymous Coward]

" They'd much rather have open standards that they can use, and profit from consulting you to death wrapping a service layer around them."

Yes, that's very true. But they are OPEN STANDARDS. You don't have to give IBM oodles of money, you can just figure it out for yourself.

IBM will continue to make money as long as there are people (or companies) around who are willing to pay their rates, I'm guessing because they feel they get their money's worth.

Re:we've come a long way

[Gr8Apes]

IBM used to make overpriced hardware sold at tremendous profit True, but so did everyone else in the space at the time. Go look at your history and look at the number of players in the game. It was far more than '1'.

... until that little upstart microsoft came along and elegantly used their own weight against them in a classic game of corporate judo. Actually, MS was merely along for the ride on the original IBM PC boat. What killed IBM is manifold, from their lack of vision of where PCs would go to the massive infighting among divisions (the above mentioned high profit businesses especially) choking the life out of the PC divisions. Even the open nature of the PC hardware spec wasn't that big an issue. But I really don't want to bring up the entire "what-if" set of threads again.

It may just be that IBM still smarts from that or it may be that they've really 'seen the light'. This is good news, personally I'd like to see the transparency of these committees and their members go up a notch or two, too much potential for procedural trickery still exists. I guarantee you the only the light IBM has seen is the green one from profit in services. Open Specs means everyone can play. More implementations means more bugs to work around. More bugs means gee - we can build you this layer.... which is merely the layer they built 900 customers ago and are reselling yet again for 90000% profit. Those are numbers that make even MS drool.

Re:we've come a long way

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting how Microsoft refers to being unchallenged as "business as usual."

Re:we've come a long way

[jkrise]

Interesting how Microsoft words corruption, bribery and subverting the ISO process as "Business as Usual". In which case, what IBM is doing is very good for the industry - exposing crooks for what they are.

Re:we've come a long way

[ta bu shi da yu]

Yup, and to chime in here - that's the difference in this situation. Let's say IBM gets lots of money for an overpriced service. In this market, there is noone forcing you to use their services. With Microsoft software, however, because they have a virtual monopoly then everyone is forced to use Microsoft's non-open, locked down format.

The quote that was most telling for me was this one, from Tsilas:

"[Mandating open standards in government] is a new way to compete. They are using government intervention as a way to compete. It's competing through regulation, because you couldn't compete technically."

That quote is, frankly, hilarious. Finally they have found that they are uncompetitive in something, and boy do they find this difficult. They've been so used to forcing the market to use their product that when the market finally corrects itself they're not sure what to do. Thus they try to fast-track a technically inferior standard.

The end result is that the exact opposite of what Tsilas asserts is happening. The ODF format is technically superior, but because it won't work with old Microsoft "features" (read: bugs), Microsoft cannot compete.

IBM Are Right

[CmdrGravy]

I think IBM are absolutely right when they say that the customers prefer to have documented open standards which can be supported by a variety of different applications from different vendors.

I can see no case at all to support Microsofts point of view that it's better to use a document format which is supported by only one company that can only be guaranteed to work with their products and where this guarantee is not set in stone and could be subject to change at the whim of the company.

From a business point of view anything which maintains the lock in to Microsofts Office products is good for Microsoft and anything which is truly open benefits IBM and as I said above I think what the customer wants in this case is also the same thing IBM want which means IBM are going to be getting a lot of goodwill for pushing their point of view.

It will be interesting to see just how far MS are willing to go to defend their office lock in and whether they will see sense, give in and rely on Office ( which is a good product IMHO ) to compete on a level playing field with it's competitors.

Re:IBM Are Right

[cp.tar]

From a business point of view anything which maintains the lock in to Microsofts Office products is good for Microsoft and anything which is truly open benefits IBM and as I said above I think what the customer wants in this case is also the same thing IBM want which means IBM are going to be getting a lot of goodwill for pushing their point of view.

Anything which maintains the lock-in to MS Office &c. is good for Microsoft and Microsoft alone.
Anything which is truly open benefits IBM as well as the rest of the world.

With two sides such as these, there is really no question as to which side I'm on.
Of course, should IBM become too greedy, nothing would stop me from loathing them as much as I loathe Microsoft nowadays.

What doesn't make sense

[duffbeer703]

Is that Microsoft Office blows OO.org away. Completely. Microsoft could go with ODF and still compete very well against OO.

Re:What doesn't make sense

[Zygamorph]

I keep "hearing" the statement but I don't experience it. I use oo.org regularly with absolutely no problems. I use MS Office occasionally with no problems so how is it that MS Office blows away oo.org?

BTW - I have no interest in "reasons" such as the following:

1. xx starts up 3 seconds faster = 1 more sip of tea, where's the down side?
2. The user interface isn't the same = well duh, that just means you're more familiar with one than the other
3. xx is more compatible with other parts of the xx suite - mega duh, and not always true
4. xx is more "standard" - whose standard? I lean toward ODF because it is truly open but either way our main problem 10 years from now will be finding hardware to read those funny plastic disks and paying someone to do it.

Re:What doesn't make sense

[Just Some Guy]

Except for the fact that OO.org is free.

And the scary thing (for MS) is that it being free changes, well, everything. At my company, we used to have a few people who needed a word processor, so they got Office. When OOo got good enough, we start giving it out to everyone on our standard deployment. Have a PC? You're getting OpenOffice. Now we find ourselves in the position where OOo is our standard suite, and only a couple of people get MS Office (mainly because of legacy documents, like complicated spreadsheets etc.).

In more recent news, my little Eee PC ships with OpenOffice. A few million units later, a lot of people will have OOo who never knew such a thing existed before. Free-of-charge isn't a huge selling point for large corporations where maintenance costs are more important than initial purchase costs, but it's extremely influential everywhere else. The thin end of the wedge is already in, and now it's starting to split the market wide open.

IBM is influential with knowledgeable people.

[Futurepower(R)]

Re-worded quote from the comment above: "Most companies out there are All-Microsoft shops -- They won't even consider anything else. Most people care only about their core business, and that isn't IT."

True, but IBM is influential with people who understand Microsoft's abuse. See this quote from the Ars Technica article:

A ZDNet article published late last month quotes Microsoft officials who claim that IBM is solely responsible for ISO's recent decision to deny OOXML fast-track approval. "Let's be very clear," Jean Paoli, Microsoft's senior director of XML technology, told ZDNet. "It has been fostered by a single company--IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."

I'm glad we don't have "business as usual", as defined by Microsoft.

You forgot hardware and software

[Nursie]

IBM sell hardware and Software too. Open standards allow IBM to suggest its own software and hardware as part of its consultancy :)

Translation:

[WK2]

"Let's be very clear," Jean Paoli, Microsoft's senior director of XML technology, told ZDNet. "It has been fostered by a single company--IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."

Translation: "We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that pesky megacorp!"

Choice of battlefield

[tjwhaynes]

What are the sales figures of OS/2 and SmartSuite versus Windows and Office, again?

That might be the battlefield that Microsoft would like to have chosen but it isn't the one that IBM is playing on. For IBM, the money is in the middleware. For Microsoft, the money is on the desktop.

Before I go on, yes, I work for IBM. What follows is entirely my own opinions and is not a formal statement of IBM policy.

ODF is a huge enabler for middleware document services because it removes barriers at the desktop end and allows significant freedom for customers to choose solutions. IBM already has plenty of XML integration ticking in its products (such as pureXML integrated in DB2 and the Content Manager products) and ODF fits very nicely into that scenario. IBM would like to be able to go to customers and offer a complete end-to-end document/content management system. Why do you think that IBM would produce the Symphony products and integrate Document editing into Lotus Notes 8?

While OOXML also fits into the XML-on-middleware approach, it necessarily ties itself to a set of Microsoft clients because only Microsoft will know what the next version of Office will support with respect to OOXML and even the most assiduous followers of OOXML implementations outside Microsoft will be months (or more likely years) behind the latest OOXML version.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes