Draper, Utah – Nov. 21, 2005 – NextPage today announced that it is partnering with Microsoft and eight other companies to form an international standard for Microsoft Office Open XML document format technology. The standardization of this format will open the technology behind billions of documents to customers and the industry as an international standard.
Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, the British Library, Essilor, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, NextPage, Statoil ASA and Toshiba are the companies participating in the effort and will co-sponsor a submission to Ecma International, the international standardization organization, of the Open XML formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint from the next generation of Office technologies, code named Office“12.” The group intends to submit the results of their collaboration to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for approval, and to maintain the evolution of the formats going forward.
“NextPage has tremendous knowledge of how users work with Microsoft Office, because their document collaboration service is so closely tied to Office,” said Jean Paoli, Senior Director of XML Architecture, Microsoft Corp. “Their expertise in how Office is used daily and integrated in the business processes of corporations will be very valuable in the standardization of the Office Open XML format. We look forward to working with them in the Technical Committee.”
Thousands of documents are created every minute in an Office format from the estimated 400 million users. All those users will be able to take advantage of the benefits of the new open standard these industry leaders are co-submitting to Ecma, enabling document contents to be accessed, searched, used, integrated and developed in new, innovative ways.
“Microsoft’s move to offer the document formats for Ecma standardization will benefit not only anyone who works with Office documents, but provide an opportunity for the entire industry to take advantage of the work Microsoft is doing with XML in Office,” said Darren Lee, president and CEO of NextPage. “We are pleased to be part of this effort, and believe that it will enable independent software vendors and developers around the world to capitalize on the power of these file formats for their own solutions.”
Customers, technology providers, and developers around the globe will be able to work with the Open XML file formats without barriers, creating a broad ecosystem of products, applications and services that can work with the formats, with or without Microsoft software. As a result, documents and public records can be archived, maintained and kept in perpetuity with long term, widespread industry support.
NextPage recently launched NextPage® 2 Document Collaboration, a subscription service that integrates how people collaborate daily on documents – typically in Microsoft Office and in e-mail. The service eliminates user adoption problems by not requiring a centralized repository to store and manage documents and allows users to work online or offline. NextPage 2 Document Collaboration delivers real-time status of all document versions as documents progress through their life cycles. It revolutionizes the document experience through a user interface, called the NextPage Activity Center™, that reports status of documents, including who has opened, who is editing, where the latest version is and what needs to be done next.
About Ecma International
Since its inception in 1961, Ecma International (Ecma) has developed standards for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Consumer Electronics (CE).
The aims of Ecma International are:
To develop, in co-operation with the appropriate National, European and International organizations Standards and Technical Reports in order to facilitate and standardize the use of Communication Technology (ICT) and Consumer Electronics (CE).
To encourage the correct use of Standards by influencing the environment in which they are applied.
To publish these Standards and Technical Reports in electronic and printed form; the publications can be freely copied by all interested parties without restrictions.
For over forty years Ecma has actively contributed to world-wide standardization in information technology and telecommunications. More than 365 Ecma Standards and almost 90 Technical Reports of high quality have been published, more than 2/3 of which have also been adopted as International Standards and/or Technical Reports. Publications can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.ecma-international.org/.
About NextPage
NextPage is disrupting how businesses solve their document collaboration problems and eliminating product abandonment experienced by traditional document management and collaboration products. NextPage delivers products that focus on solving problems from a user’s perspective. NextPage 2 Document Collaboration is the first to connect all document-based collaboration by tracking document versions that are sent as e-mail attachments, stored on users’ desktops and created outside the organization. The service provides a 360 degree view of all document activities and works whether users are online or offline. NextPage 2 Document Collaboration reduces the risk of sending out the wrong version, prevents wasted time working on wrong versions and eliminates the cost of document coordination. For more information, visit www.nextpage.com or call 801-748-4400.
###
NextPage is a registered trademark, and Activity Center, Digital Thread, Document Signature, Version Map and Version Check are service marks of NextPage Inc. All other names are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Contact:
Mark Fredrickson
NextPage Inc.
801-748-4443
pr@nextpage.com
