New Bio-IT Alliance will take advantage of the Open XML formats
Here's another example of folks getting ready to take advantage of the Open XML formats for their business solutions. The newly announced BioIT alliance (https://www.medadnews.com/News/Index.cfm?articleid=328651) was formed to help connect the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, hardware and software industries. As you can imagine, Open XML formats can play a huge role here. Check out this quote:
"Through the BioIT Alliance, we are working closely with Microsoft to increase data access across our instrument systems and data analysis software tools using Ecma Open Office XML," said Catherine M. Burzik, president of Applied Biosystems. "This format enables life science companies to access data using the familiar Microsoft Office Excel(R) interface, providing them with the insight they need to make decisions more quickly."
As I said, this is yet another example of how these new Open XML formats really change the game when it comes to interacting with Office applications. In this case, they can use the SpreadsheetML format to automatically generate data in a much richer, interactive format with no vendor lock-in or worry about long term archivability. This particular organization was founded by the following members: Accelrys Software, Affymetrix, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Applied Biosystems and The Scripps Research Institute.
I'm expecting that after Beta 2 ships, we'll see more and more of these examples up on the openxmldeveloper.org site.
-Brian