David Mitchell, senior vice president of IT research at Ovum, said the decision does not mean the demise of ODF, one of the other ISO-ratified document standards.

“What is does mean is that, developers of software that works with documents will have to support both formats, and that these developers will need to compete on the basis of the intrinsic merits of their products rather than using a standards body lockout – from either the ODF or the Open XML camp,” Mitchell said.

Prior to ISO members voting to adopt OOXML, InternetNZ executive director Keith Davidson said: “ODF appears to be the suitable generic international standard. Endorsing another standard such as OOXML could threaten the open and interoperable tenets on which the Internet is built.

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