14 DAY TRIAL // The United Kingdom government earlier today announced its decision to adopt the ODF format as standard for all ministries and departments, thus stepping away from Microsoft software and encouraging everyone to choose the productivity suite that better addresses their needs.
While this is clearly a strong hit received by Microsoft, the Redmond-based tech giant said in a statement for IT Pro that, even though the decision was supposed to cut costs and give citizens more choices when it comes to choosing a productivity suite, it’s still unclear how exactly they would benefit from it.
Microsoft Office already works with ODF, the company emphasized, and both Office 2013 and Office 365 are supporting this particular format.
“Microsoft believes it is unproven and unclear how UK citizens will benefit from the government’s decision,” a company spokesperson says.
“We actively support a broad range of open standards, which is why (like Adobe has with the PDF file format) we now collaborate with many contributors to maintain the Open XML file format through independent and international standards bodies.”
At the same time, the company representative explains that Microsoft actually agrees with offering customers more choices because this leads to increased competition and just like it’s the case with any other business out there, it eventually creates better products for customers.
“The government’s stated and laudable strategy to be cloud-first in the provision of its services to citizens depends on nurturing, not constraining such innovation,” the spokesperson concludes.