Inside story: How Microsoft & Massachusetts played hardball over open standards

E-mails show that the vendor lobbied for hardball legislation over the file format controversy -- and then backed off.

By Carol Sliwa

December 4, 2006 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Less than a week after he became CIO of Massachusetts last February, Louis Gutierrez sensed a serious threat to his power — one that was being promoted by a seemingly unlikely source. Within a matter of days, Gutierrez confirmed that Brian Burke, Microsoft Corp.’s government affairs director for the Northeast, had been backing an amendment to an economic stimulus bill that would largely strip the Massachusetts Information Technology Division of its decision-making authority.

Louis Gutierrez

For Microsoft, the call to arms had sounded several months earlier, when the state’s IT division surprised the company with a controversial decision to adopt the Open Document Format for Office Applications, or ODF, as its standard file format. Even worse, from Microsoft’s perspective, the policy stipulated that new desktop applications acquired by state agencies feature built-in support for ODF, a standard developed and promoted by some of its rivals — most prominently, IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc.

The amendment Burke was promoting had the potential to stop the ODF policy dead in its tracks by giving a government task force and the secretary of state’s office approval rights on IT standards and procurement policies. Gutierrez, who resigned last month over a funding dispute that appeared to be unrelated to the ODF controversy, clearly was rankled by Burke’s involvement with the amendment. Yet he made no attempt to shut the door on Microsoft. On the contrary, he did the opposite.

“While Brian will never be welcome in my office, Microsoft, of course, will remain so,” Gutierrez wrote to Alan Yates, a general manager in the company’s information worker product management group, in an e-mail message that detailed what he had learned about Burke’s lobbying.

The message, sent on March 3, is one of more than 300 e-mails and attached documents obtained by Computerworld under the Massachusetts Public Records Law. The e-mails provide a behind-the-scenes look at some of the hardball tactics used, compromises considered and prickly negotiations that ensued as Gutierrez and Yates each tried to deal with the ramifications of the first-of-its-kind policy calling for state agencies to adopt ODF by Jan. 1, 2007.

The topic of document formats may have an arcane air to it, but it matters deeply to the world’s richest software company. Document formats have played a critical role in helping Microsoft to secure and maintain its dominance of the office-productivity applications market, with more than 400 million users of its Office software worldwide.

“It wasn’t the only reason that people standardized on Microsoft Office, but it was the main reason,” said Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner Inc.

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

Xerox

Win a color printer!

By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!

Microsoft

Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 today.

Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.

Sybase

NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS

In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

5 Architecture Issues that Impact BES performance

LIVE Jul 21, 2009 02:00 PM ET

An All-in-One Approach to Web Security
Granting web access to employees poses challenges to IT administrators and introduces unique security risks. Even as companies have perfected their security techniques...

Systems and Software Product Line Engineering with SysML, UML and the Rhapsody/Gears Bridge
One of the great challenges and opportunities in systems and software delivery today is Product Line Engineering - creating, evolving and maintaining a...

The Hidden Dangers of Spam
Beyond the well-understood productivity drain that spam inflicts on businesses, threats posed by illicit email circulating through a network are causing many security...

Best Practices for Developing Model Based Embedded Software with Bruce Douglas
By exclusively using SysML for the representation and specification of system characteristics, you will gain a seamless transition from SysML-based systems design to...

Open Source Security Myths Dispelled
Open Source Software is computer software whose source code is available to the general public. This openly viewable nature means that if possible...

Leverage requirements engineering best practices to develop successful automotive systems
The growing number and complexity of systems and software in automobiles is affecting OEMs and vendors across the automotive supply chain . How...

Extending BI with Dashboards
Operational, tactical and strategic dashboards provide more business control, graphically compelling persuasion, and extended BI adoption. In short, your investment in dashboards will...

Requirements Engineering for Automotive - A customer's experience
During the podcast, Mark explains why requirements management is so important to the success of automotive systems and software development....

When the going gets tough, the tough need insight: Performance management in a weak economy.
Today's economic conditions have sparked a range of challenges for companies. Use IBM Cognos' performance management software to make gains on your competitors...

Managing And Protecting Your Ever Increasing Mobile Assets
Learn best practices for desktop and application virtualization, computer security, and computer life-cycle management....

All White Papers | All Webcasts