If anyone was wondering whether or not Adobe has declared war against the (ostensibly ailing) Microsoft, the evidence became unmistakable on October 1.
I continue to marvel at Adobe’s “Mouse That Roared” approach to the battle: its market cap is slightly less than 10% of Microsoft’s. But the war has certainly begun.
We can argue about the start date. I don’t think we need to trace it back to early eBook days. I see the beginning as the battle for PDF. In a very confused set of corporate interactions, Adobe refused to allow Microsoft to have an Adobe-endorsed save-to-PDF feature in Vista and Office 2007, forcing Microsoft to make save-to-PDF a separate downloadable “feature”. At the time it seemed to me Adobe was merely being spiteful (although I recognized the beginning of a battle). Microsoft created a separate download for save to PDF or to XPS (its supposed PDF killer), available both for XP and Vista. Battle over?
Hardly.
Adobe soon announced PDF Mars, a version of PDF with some remarkable similarities to XPS. Round two.
Now we’re faced with round three, where Adobe has purchased a Web-enabled word-processing application. By some otherworldly coincidence, on the same day as this announcement (October 1), Microsoft announced its own Web-enabled variation on the Office suite.
Microsoft is perceived by its detractors in retrenched mode, a bit like Napoleon fleeing Moscow. Are we to believe that Microsoft has no troops still ready to fight? I doubt that. But it’s an interesting battle between the emerging Adobe and the great Goliath.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 |
Category:
Standards |
If you’ve been following the industry news in the last few weeks you may have noted that Microsoft failed (narrowly) to secure ISO approval for Office Open XML (OOXML). Your eyes may also have glazed over while you moved on to the next story.
There are some extremely complex issues that underlie this story. They impact the development of document standards, the future of XML in publishing, Microsoft’s role in continuing to dominate software for document publishing and much more.
The most cogent column I’ve read on the standards aspect of the issue is by Jeremy Allison, published 9/17 on ZDNet Technology News, and appears here.
Recommend reading.
I will shortly be adding background information on this issue into my section on Software, listed under Influences.
Much is being made of Adobe Systems recent announcement that “it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).”
The main hubbub surrounds the contention of several bloggers that this represents another attack by Adobe on Microsoft and its recently-released XPS format, “the PDF killer.” Quite probably so. It’s a subject worth examining, although not superficially.
For today I’d like to consider what it means to become an ISO standard. I think of this as the equivalent of getting a lifetime achievement award from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Oscars). It means you were pretty good, but you’re now almost dead.
As of December 31, 2005, there were 15,649 published ISO standards, with 1,240 released in that year alone. Under the heading of electronics, information technology and telecommunications, there were 2,447 published standards. How many does your organization conform to? If this impresses you, remember to celebrate World Standards Day on October 14! And for even more fun, there’s the new isomemory game (http://www.iso.org/iso/en/commcentre/isomemory/startpage.html#). I hear it’s fun for the whole family!
You can’t read the published standards on the ISO site without giving them a chunk of cash first. That says something in itself; I’m just not sure what. But you can see listings of the bodies buried in the ISO graveyard. For example ISO 12639:2004 is the TIFF/IT standard, once used widely in the prepress industry, but no longer a player. You can however download it for 176 Swiss francs, 8700 Yugoslav dinars, or about $140 Yankee dollars.
ISO 6804:1991 covers “rubber hoses and hose assemblies for washing-machines and dishwashers -- Specification for inlet hoses.” It’s yours for 48 Swiss francs!
I could go on (and am tempted to do so).
At the same time, there are certain relevant standards that have crept into ISO…as Adobe mentions in its press release, all of the PDF sibling are now ISO standards (PDF/X, PDF-X1, etc.). The OpenDocument Format is a standard. And so on.
So what is the significance of becoming an ISO standard when your standard is one that people actually use? Historically, none; more recently, some.
As the publishing industry has evolved into an ever-more-complex microsystem, more and more organizations (and indeed states, countries, etc.) are choosing to endorse standards that have been accepted and published by ISO.
Will more organizations use PDF if it’s an ISO standard? Probably not. That is, unless Microsoft gains real traction with XPS. There are some very high-stakes games being played against the Microsoft/Windows juggernaut, and standards have become a key weapon in the game. Adobe has played a major trump card. Microsoft: your move.
