Pattern Finder

Unraveling the Microsoft Word Kerfuffle

On Tuesday, a Texas U.S. District Court issued an injunction against Microsoft, saying it couldn't sell versions of Microsoft Word that "have the capability of opening a .XML, .DOCX, . or .DOCM file (an 'XML file') containing custom XML." This would seem to stop Microsoft from selling Word 2003, Word 2007, and the forthcoming Word 2010 product.  Microsoft has 60 days to appeal, and it may overturn this verdict, but it does give an IT manager pause.

So what's this all about? When Microsoft designed its XML file formats (OOXML), it included the ability to create custom schemas, somewhat akin to views in a database. The idea was that enterprises could add structured data to documents (e.g., an hCard [address] entry) without changing the underlying document schema. These custom schemas were not embedded in the document proper, but did travel along in the document .ZIP file. This meant that a document could contain multiple custom schemas: one highlighting people's names in a document, another highlighting place names, for example. This "to the side" mapping mechanism is apparently what violates i4i's patent.

ODF 1.1, the other current XML document standard, does not have such a rich custom schema mechanism, but the forthcoming ODF 1.2 standard will have a much better one. When a reporter, Kurt Mackie, called me Wednesday evening, I mused that ODF 1.2 might violate the i4i patent as well. The article reads, "The current version, ODF 1.1, doesn't use this custom XML approach, but 'ODF 1.2 will move to a similar custom schema that OOXML has, he [Guy Creese] said in a phone interview." While the quote is accurate, at this point I think I was wrong. True, ODF 1.2 supports a much richer metadata mechanism, but it's not custom XML-based, but rather RDF-based (see http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2008/programme/friday_1475.pdf). The effect is somewhat the same, but the mechanism is different, and that makes all the difference, at least when it comes to patents.

How will this all play out? I'm not sure--and my impression is no one knows for sure.

Google: Going Around IT Again

Mike Gotta pointed me to a post over at ReadWriteWeb entitled, "Google Apps Campaign: How Not to Influence IT Experts." Google has started a billboard campaign to urge enterprises to start using Google Apps (since it's mostly been a bust in large enterprises). There's also a web site--Google Apps "Spread the Word"--that encourages employees to convince IT to move to Google Apps. Dana Oshiro, the author, notes (and I think correctly),

Meanwhile Google Apps enthusiasts are asked to influence the very people who are already more qualified to make IT-related infrastructural decisions. In other words, if you've ever seen a non-technical employee tell an IT administrator how to do his/her job, the outcome probably wasn't pretty.

Yet commenters on the post note that change in IT often came from outside IT. This is true as well. Minicomputers became popular because they offered a way for business departments to get around the slow as molasses mainframe computer group. PC LANs, in turn, became popular because they offered a way for users to get around both the mainframe and minicomputer groups.

Google's ad campaign illustrates two things. First, the company's naivete--or stupidity, depending on your point of view--at how to deal with enterprise IT. (They tried this with Google Apps Team Edition and that wasn't a huge success.)

Second, that we're going to see a replay of history here. Yes, Google Apps is currently immature--in the same way that PC LANs were immature in their early days. Yet those bugs got fixed over time, and LANs became an IT staple. We're going to see the same thing happen with SaaS-based collaboration, content, and communication. Whether Google is the company that will deliver it is debatable, but not the fact that it will happen.