In order to strengthen users’ choice among document formats and expanded opportunity for creators, partners and rivals, Microsoft Corporation has launched ‘Document Interoperability Initiative,’ a program to test and improve how well certain document formats function across various platforms and operating systems (OS),

The launch of ‘Document Interoperability Initiative’ was a crucial step in Microsoft’s pledge to execute a set of strategic changes in its technology as well as business practices to enhance interoperability.

Tom Robertson, Microsoft general manager of Interoperability and Standards said, “Microsoft recognises that users want to choose the document format that best suits their needs and that vendors have a responsibility to work together to achieve interoperability between different format implementations.”

“The Document Interoperability Initiative brings vendors together to achieve real-world interoperability between documents that customers use through testing of implementations, building conformance test suites and creating document formats that optimise interoperability between different formats.

As part of the interoperability principles we announced on Feb 21, this initiative helps achieve our goal of reshaping business practices to meet the interoperability needs of our customers and the market,” Mr. Robertson added.

The new plan, part of Microsoft’s general ‘Interoperability Principles’ was declared during the last month. Microsoft now announced offering open protocols and open APIs to developers functioning with Microsoft’s “high-volume products” such as the .NET Framework, Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Exchange 2007, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

Microsoft plans to work together with various ISVs on the document interoperability initiative that will have its first lab in Cambridge. The ISV participants will be DataViz, Mark Logic Corp., Novell, Nuance Communications and Quickoffice.

The initial lab work will study document format interoperability on the iPhone operating system, Linux, Mac OS X Leopard, Palm OS, Symbian OS and Windows Mobile.

Other labs will be hosted in Seoul, South Korea (in the week of March 10) and Berlin (in early April).

Jean Paoli, general manager for Interoperability and XML Architecture at Microsoft said, “The labs are designed to bring technical staff together to roll up their sleeves and test interoperability between implementations of formats and address issues that are identified either in those implementations or in the translation technologies used to work across formats.”