As expected, the ISO on Wednesday announced that Office Open XML (OOXML) has been approved as a standard, marking the end a long and sometimes contentious path.

The Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issued a press release with the details of a vote that showed Open XML receiving 75 percent approval and 14 percent disapproval. It needed two-thirds approval and not more than 25 percent disapproval to pass.

News of the vote results circulated on Tuesday when open-document advocates released a document showing the results. Microsoft confirmed the information later in the day.

The effort to make Open XML an ISO standard did not pass a ballot in September, which precipitated a follow-on Ballot Resolution Meeting in February where, after redundancies were eliminated, over 1,000 issues were considered, according to the ISO.

Following the BRM, delegates from participants had the option of changing their position from No or Abstain to Yes--something that enough did to have the effort pass.

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No matter which side you're on or whom you believe, OOXML is now on par with ODF as an international standard. The practical question for business, government and consumer users of Office and other productivity suites remains: What comes next, and how will they be affected?

Proper implementation of the standard in Office 2007 seems to be a likely next step. Office 2007 is the suite that sparked the war when Microsoft decided to create its own XML-based document format for it and not include the existing ODF technology as a native file format.

Robertson said now that the format has been ratified, Microsoft will begin working on a road map for implementation, although he could not say when that would happen.

OOXML approval only first step in road to adoption

And:

* ODF Alliance Statement on the ISO Vote on OOXML
* ISO/IEC DIS 29500 receives necessary votes for approval as an International Standard
* Microsoft's Statement
* Microsoft OOXML has become IS 29500: How did it happen?