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IBM And Sun to Hold Conference on OpenDocument

Adobe, Corel, Google, IBM, Novell and Sun vs. Microsoft?

IBM and Sun Microsystems will host a conference Friday to "coordinate the technical and strategic advancement" of the OpenDocument format, a rising threat to Microsoft's Office dominance.

OpenDocument is short for OASIS Open Document Format for Office Application, a technical specification that explains how office documents are to be stored and shared.

The format intrigued some governmental institutes such as the state of Massachusetts which decided to switch to applications that follow the OpenDocument standards, dropping Microsoft Office. The decision is currently being reviewed after being criticized by some officials.

The Massachusetts Chief Information Officer, Peter Quinn will speak at Friday's meeting at the IBM Learning Center in Armonk, NY.

Adobe, Corel, Google, IBM, Novell and Sun are just some of the companies that will support the standard, while Microsoft does not have plans to introduce OpenDocument support in its next Office update.