OpenDocument for your organisation

The OpenDocument Format is the document file format that has been defined by the OASIS consortium.

This file format has been developped on the existing native file format of the OpenOffice.org office suite (version 1.0) and has been created in order to become the standard file format for office suites. It is used by OpenOffice.org 2.0, StarOffice, and other office suites such as KOffice, TextMaker, IBM Workplace and Abiword.

The OpenDocument file format is important because it is the only standard and open document file format for office suite on the market.

OpenDocument Format was approved as an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 26300) on May 2006. It can be freely implemented by anyone without restriction in any software.
In contrast to proprietary file formats, OpenDocument allows the use, the editing, the exchange and the archival of data in a standard file format that is both perennial and vendor-independent. The OpenDocument format has been designed in order to become the industry standard for the office file format. Its importance and the trials that are at stake about its success or failure are hence deemed to be strategic. In this regard, the several vendors and organizations (Sun Microsystems, IBM, Adobe, Intel, Novell) that have teamed up in order to design OpenDocument have worked hard at making sure this format could reach its goal.
OpenDocument is hence positionned as much more than an open file format; it is a standardized and accepted format requested by the market in order to use on the long term. What's more, OpenDocument together with its parent format (the OpenOffice 1.0 file format) have proven their technical viability by being used the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice office suites.
The authors of the OpenDocument file format (the relevant technical committee of the OASIS consortium) have achieved a worldwide recognized standard.

OpenDocument is thus much more than yet another document file format.

OpenDocument encapsulates every information and metadata related to the document in XML files stored in its open and standard format. OpenDocument is thus the key element for managing the documents and content that are at the core of the decision and operational processes of the organization. In this regard, OpenDocument is able to make the office content available and usable on the very long term while freeing it from other locked-in and non-standard office file formats.

The power of XML backed by the relevance of the standard make OpenDocument one of the key element of the SOA (Services-Oriented Architectures) and Web Services.

This is why OpenDocument positions itself as a credible attempt to put the data first while making the applications slip in the background, leaving the data unaffected by any vendor's lock-in. Thus it is not surprizing to see that OpenDocument has gathered strong interest among many governments and administrations.

Through its experienced team, Ars Aperta has an outstanding expertise on the OpenDocument file format. While some of its members have been at the vangard of the creation of this format, others contribute regularly to the OpenOffice.org project.

OpenDocument can help your organization in various ways:

• OpenDocument garantees you the total control over your data,
• OpenDocument can ease your reliance on specific vendors,
• OpenDocument allows for a perennial use of its file format while providing a real archival capacity on the long term (>30 years),
• OpenDocument helps you by becoming the standard output format for any document across the organisation.

Online community for the OpenDocument Format OASIS Standard