Adopting Document Standards

According to a recent IDC survey entitled Adoption of Document Standards commissioned by Microsoft, organizations are increasingly interested in employing XML-based standards, primarily due to interoperability between tools and ease of transition from existing document bases to new standards.

Other findings include:

• Large organizations with diverse business needs prefer multiple document standards.
• Although IT managers appear to strongly prefer a single standard to reduce cost and complexity of implementation, line-of-business managers closer to the daily needs of business support the desire for multiple document standards.
• PDF, Open XML, and OpenDocument Format are all in use today, with PDF viewed as the dominant standard and Open XML demonstrating "more traction in the market compared to other XML-based standards."
• Companies in Europe with an interest in Open XML expect to be piloting or fully deploying the standard a year from today. Those interested in ODF are more likely to be in the "consideration" phase rather than piloting or fully deploying it within that same time frame.

"Pragmatic business needs are clearly on top of mind when it comes to standards adoption, both within the public and private sector," said Per Andersen, managing director of IDC Nordic. "The survey results reveal that multiple document standards are deployed today, and that companies see the transition of the existing base of documents as one of the most important criteria when selecting a document standard."

Survey respondents included managers charged with supporting document standards in 200 organizations (100 in the U.S. and 100 in Europe). 50 organizations with more than 250 employees were selected from the public sector, another 50 from the commercial sector.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 01:31 PM  Permalink