Once in a while, a confluence of random events (or not so random, depending on your belief system) can create the ideal aha! moment. The moment of clarity when all the pieces just fall into place and you realize "that's what's going on!"

I believe I have had one of those moments. And if this thought has any basis in reality, it could mean that everything we have seen in IT is about to make a huge change.

As I was poking around with this SharePoint system (a VM loaned to me by another friend who's an SharePoint MVP) over the last couple of weeks, the ongoing debate about the Office Open XML (OOXML) format was coming out of hibernation as the ballot resolution meeting to debate the format's fate as an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard starts next Monday in Geneva. As the BRM date approaches, the rhetoric on both sides of the OOXML argument has gotten louder, and each side has accused the other of gaming the ISO system.

I don't know if IBM is playing footloose and fancy free with the ISO process. I know a lot of my colleagues in the open source community deny that such a thing might ever happen. IBM is the guy in the white hat, right? But if it were to ever come out that IBM was doing some covert lobbying on the side, it would not surprise me one bit. Nor am I any longer surprised why Redmond is being so desperate to get the OOXML made an ISO standard.

The aha! moment, you see, made it clear to me just how much is at stake.

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