At the time of writing, Office 2007 is invariably bundled on new PCs with a free 60-day trial period. This means that unsuspecting users, which is the norm in the SME sector, are using Office 2007 out of the box. Most do not even realise they are using the new open XML format by default and, by the time the 60-day trial period is up, they are completely locked in. Of course, when those same users send their open XML files by e-mail, the recipients wonder why they cannot open a "simple MS Office document" and they in turn decide to upgrade. As a result Office 2007 market penetration is accelerating at a serious rate.
There is no point in whining about the monopolistic forces at play, not to mention the sweetheart OEM/bundling deals between Microsoft and the likes of Dell and HP. The fact is that, in a very short time, Open XML will be the new de facto, if not de jure, standard regardless of current attempts to negotiate a truly open document format. I am already getting complaints from my customers that they cannot open e-mail attachments. They say it is embarrassing to have to request a resend in PDF or DOC format. Re-education works only up to a point. At the end of the day, my customers expect to be able to open any common document they are likely to encounter.
In practice, this means that OpenOffice.org needs to boost it's MS Office compatibility credentials - and fast. DOC and XLS support is no longer sufficient. My worry is that, given the success of OO.org to date, and the current stand-off in open document standard negotiations, our beloved OO.org strategists (who are they??) may feel empowered to ignore this MS threat.
Having played around with Office 2007 a little, I actually find it somewhat patronising and tedious to use although it does have a very sexy look (and impressions are everything nowadays!). I genuinely feel that this represents an opportune moment for OO.org to gain critical mass with a disillusioned marketplace...but only if reliable Open XML support can be implemented in a very short time frame. Since Microsoft has published its new "open" standards, OO.org does not need to embark on a tedious reverse-engineering process. While you can be sure there will be plenty of gotchas along the way, this is as likely to affect Microsoft in these early days as much as any potential clone application. There will of course be structural differences which have to be reconciled with native OpenOffice.org formats but necessity is the mother of invention and translation prowess has always been an OO.org strength.
Open XML support needs to be number one priority for the foreseeable future or it will be a case of déja vu (all over again)!
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