Microsoft has announced support for Adobe's PDFs just two weeks after the state of Massachusetts announced it will use only nonproprietary document formats. Is there a connection?
Analysts, and even Adobe officials, expressed some surprise over the Monday announcement that Microsoft will support Adobe's PDF (Portable Document Format) after 12 years of all but denying that the file interchange standard existed.
The timing of Microsoft's action also raised some eyebrows.
Less than two weeks ago, the state of Massachusetts said it will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007.
On Monday, Microsoft said a forthcoming beta release of Office 12 will provide native support for PDF.
"I'd say it's a remarkable coincidence," Eugene Lee, vice president of marketing for Adobe's Intelligent Documents Business Unit, told Ziff Davis Internet. "But I doubt they wrote the code in 10 days.
Is Microsoft running scared of OpenDocument? Click here to read more.
"We think the timing is interesting, too, in view of all the noise the operating system group at Microsoft has been making regarding the XAML [Extensible Application Markup Language] document formats they have developed, along with the new XML-based Office formats the applications group has devised," Lee continued.
"To have invested all that time and effort into those [projects] and not realize what customers really want is very interesting."
According to Lee, Adobe is "pleased that Microsoft finally 'gets it', and we welcome them to the PDF party."
The timing of the announcement appears to be driven by the Massachusetts decision, as well as format movements coming later this month by other state agencies, analysts said.
Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research, who follows Microsoft, said he would be "shocked if the timing of this announcement is a coincidence.
In addition to the Massachusetts decision, the fact that all the nation's state CIOs are meeting this month and will be discussing open formats is another factor.
"This announcement gives Massachusetts a reason to continue using Microsoft Office," Wilcox said.
Wilcox said that the Microsoft decision to support PDFs could both "help and hurt" Adobe.
"In the short term, Adobe can go to customers, point to Microsoft, and say that this validates PDFs and all the Acrobat products—even more than they already have been," Wilcox said.
"In the long term, Microsoft will be competing directly against Adobe with Metro in the future. But Microsoft won't be able to offer the same functionality around PDFs as Adobe can—especially now with Acrobat 7.0, which enables collaboration across multiple formats in creating PDFs."
According to the analysts, Microsoft will meet stiff resistance from PDF's entrenched user base. "I wouldn't bet against Adobe in this one," Wilcox said.
"Whatever the incentive, this is a move that will make a lot of customers happy, as many of them deal with PDF as an internal standard and in turn have been asking for this functionality for years," Stephen O'Grady, an IT industry analyst with RedMonk, based in Denver, Colo.
"Is it influenced by the Massachusetts decision and the resulting publicity? Undoubtedly, as this move allows Microsoft to demonstrate an ability to work with standards not in their direct control," he said.
To read more about Microsoft building PDF support into Office 12, click here.
"But it's more complex than just the decision of a single state, as I think this is ultimately about the ODF [Open Document Format]," O'Grady said, pointing to the push for open standards in the industry as well as in productivity suites.
"This move allows Microsoft to be more competitive in that area, as well as send a message that they can play nicely with standards," O'Grady wrote.
Others saw the Microsoft decision a little differently.
"Microsoft's customers have been asking for the ability to save documents, spreadsheets and presentations as PDF files for quite some time," said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC Research vice president of system software.
"There are several third-party products that add this capability to Microsoft's products that are available now. So, it's my impression that Microsoft is responding to customer demand more than doing something to directly address concerns held by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," he said.
Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research agreed that the Microsoft move wasn't directly correlated with the Massachusetts decision.
"This move had to have been in the works for a couple of years, at least," Gartenberg said. "Microsoft isn't in the position any more to not listen to what customers are saying. I think they had to wait until their alternative (Metro, was ready to go before they could support PDF."
"[Corel Corp.'s] WordPerfect and Apple's OS X have offered the save-to-PDF option for years. Microsoft undoubtedly has been working on this for a while. Sometimes events follow one another that aren't related. I think this is one of those cases," Gartenberg said.
Other Formats 
