Two Interesting Posts

A quick note for a beautiful Friday afternoon.

1) Check out the news that Tom Hanrahan has joined MS and is going to be working on Linux / Windows Interoperability. This is a great thing for our customers. We have been saying for the past year that we are seriously upping our game on interop and this is a great step in that direction.

2) On the more competitive front - Steve McGibbon has a rather direct posting about IBM and their position opposing Open XML in the standardization process.

3) I had a really good set of discussions down at TechEd with a wide range of industry analysts. There was an interesting discussion about the measurement of interoperability and how that might happen. As governments continue to place a premium on the concepts of interoperability (as they should), there is a wide range of activity around how to best acheive the goal. I am against the idea of mandated technology preferences, and am against the idea of lists of standards as the answer. I am for the idea that organizations state clear principles such as the need to take interoperability, security, reliability, performance, etc. into consideration at purchase time. Then, leave room for the technical staff to make the call based on value as to what to purchase that meets those needs. That said, how do you get the point of being able to qualify or quantify what interoperability is. I'm going to have to cogitate on that in the coming months. Thanks to Neil, James, and Cote for a really enjoyable evening.

 Have a good weekend - I'm planning to ride my new mountain bike and hopefully not hurt myself. I have a bad tendancy to prove Newton right.