Microsoft releases 14,000 pages of Office suite protocols

Microsoft has taken a serious step towards fulfilling its interoperability and openness promises for developers, partners, customers and competitors, by releasing significant protocol data. .

The organisation posted more than 14,000 pages on MSDN covering preliminary versions of technical documentation for its protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft, points out that this brings the total to more than 44,000 pages of protocol documentation now released and freely available – even to ISVs (independent software vendors), open source developers and developers in user IT departments.

Says Robertson: “We believe that providing open, consistent access to these protocols will further unleash the creativity of all developers to work on real-world interoperability solutions. The implementation of Microsoft’s interoperability principles is an important component of our overall efforts to promote interoperability in the marketplace.”

He gives the example of developers working with SharePoint protocols, who now have resources to develop products that work with Office client applications and SharePoint Server products.

source: mcsolutions.co.uk