Case Studies
FUJISOFT, Inc.
Japan
FUJISOFT, Inc., is one of Japan's leading independent system integration companies that offer IT solutions centered on Microsoft products for a wide range of businesses. Many of their customers would like to use Microsoft Office applications as the front-end of their business systems and as a result, FUJISOFT has found many advantages of using Open XML to help meet their needs. According to Hideo Hosaka, a General Manager at FUJISOFT, "Open XML has publicly released specifications, and in linking up with other systems, it has opened up possibilities that were unattainable with the conventional binary file format. Our productivity has been enhanced in accordance with the high productivity of .NET-based development."
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Ipsos Szonda
Budapest, Hungary
Ipsos Szonda is a market and opinion research company based in Hungary. They had relied on using macros in Excel to create reports for clients but wanted to find a solution that provided better report performance and reliability while reducing strain on resources. Ipsos Szonda adopted Open XML Formats to develop an advanced, automated, and high-performance report generation system so users can export data and specify how it is presented--as a document or a spreadsheet. As a result, they found greater flexibility with custom report generation and elimination of manual efforts, a reduction in time due to automation and less reliance on staff and resources, and improvements in corporate investment and overall customer satisfaction.
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Quickoffice
Dallas, Texas, USA
Texas based Quickoffice provides mobile office document software for smart phones and the means to open, edit, and send files without desktop conversion or synchronization. In December 2007, they added support for Open XML Formats in Quickoffice Premier 5.0 for use with Nokia's S60 Symbian platform to help reduce document file sizes. As a result, they now have faster download times due to a reduction in file sizes, a compressed development timeline of up to 75 percent, and an increased opportunity for interoperability with various applications due to a standardized format. According to Paul Moreton, Vice President of Quickoffice Product Management, "Taking advantage of the space-saving benefits of Open XML has been tremendously important for us because we're able to help our customers be more efficient."
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IntelliSafe Technologies
Chesapeake, Virginia, USA
IntelliSafe Technologies is a US based company that provides global enterprise software for signing and managing multiparty, multi-document approvals, electronic contracts, and transferable assets. Their software makes it possible for users to apply legally binding digital signatures to documents. Previous versions of their software called IntelliSafe Vault secured data as intended, but as customer use expanded, the need for preserving storage space grew. They decided to support Open XML Formats in their new version of IntelliSafe Vault, and as a result they have experienced improved customer value, increased speed and development efficiency, and a greater opportunity for interoperability. Customers such as Global Debt Registry now take advantage of smaller file sizes. Global Debt Registry serves those who buy and sell corporate and consumer debt on the open global market. According to Bruce Gilmore, Chief Information Officer for Global Debt Registry, "We've found that IntelliSafe's use of Open XML will significantly improve the compression of file sizes and greatly reduce our physical storage burden."
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Biblioteca Ambrosiana
Milan, Italy
Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Ambrosiana Library) is one of Italy's and Europe's foremost cultural institutions and has served as a center for study and culture since 1609. In February 2008, Biblioteca Ambrosiana started a pilot project aimed at the advanced management of its digital works and the standardization of access procedures for its documents using Open XML Formats. As a result, they can now offer information about paintings exhibited on their Web site's picture gallery so users can download this information and create customized digital guides to accompany them as they tour the library. Because of Open XML, Biblioteca Ambrosiana is able to conserve culture without technological barriers, increase transparency and long-term access to documents, and provide a user-friendly, familiar way for the public to gain access to their historical works. In addition, they now have greater flexibility to adopt future applications without worrying about document access.
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EMC Document Sciences
Carlsbad, California, USA
EMC Document Sciences is a leader in customer communication management software solutions in the United States. Through the company's primary product suite, xPression, customers can build templates that automatically populate with customer-related data from relational databases or XML data. EMC Document Sciences solutions help customers eliminate errors, ensure consistency, and increase productivity when generating customer communications. They wanted to develop a new version of its product to support leading-edge technologies and help reduce customers' storage costs by shrinking file sizes. In August 2007, they released the xPression 3 product suite that incorporates Open XML Formats. The benefits have been a 15 percent increase in development speed using fewer developers, improved integration with a variety of word-processing programs, and reduced storage needs for their customers due to smaller file sizes.
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Imasoft A/S
Fakse, Denmark
Denmark based software development company, Imasoft A/S, specializes in developing applications for police and intelligence agencies and other law enforcement customers worldwide. They created CrimeSceneNet, a software product that creates 3D digital representations of crime scenes allowing police officers to analyze investigation scenarios. However, they needed to be able to make CrimeSceneNet available and readily modified for law enforcement agencies that operated with different database and document management systems across many countries. It also needed to be interoperable with third-party applications. Imasoft A/S chose to work with Open XML Formats because of the compatibility, functionality and interoperability it provided and it was the most cost-effective solution. By using Open XML, Imasoft A/S has been able to cut development costs, develop better features in less time, and meet the needs of their worldwide customers.
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Sklenar
Vienna, Austria
Sklenar is an Austrian based company that creates text automation solutions providing companies a better way to personalize their documents. They wanted to support server-side document creation and reduce processing speeds for their customers. In January 2008, Sklenar developed a new solution called TDIWiz (Text-Data-Integration-Wizard) that incorporates Open XML Formats. As a result, their customers are able to create personalized content more quickly and easily independent of a word-processing program and the text automation can be integrated into any workflow process.
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CHU Grenoble
France
Brazilian based software and IT services company, Programmer’s decided to use Open XML Formats when developing its new electronic invoicing application. Their customers are mostly small businesses who need to communicate and send electronic invoices to the Treasury Department of Brazil. Programmer’s predicts that about 40,000 users will adopt the electronic invoicing system in its first year of release. According to Alexandre MacFadden, Director of Technology, "Open XML provides security, such as digital authentication support, and ease of use in development. It will also allow us to expand our market presence, since it’s an open and public standard; in other words, available to any manufacturer or user."
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Programmer's
Campinas, Brazil
CHU Grenoble, one of the leading healthcare providers in France, needed to implement a technical solution that would accommodate a diverse set of office tools and complex documents processed in the healthcare field while respecting the autonomy of all its users. In 2007, CHU Grenoble implemented a single, centralized document format in the hospital information system based on Open XML Formats. As a result, the hospital completely eliminated document exchange issues due to varying formats and at the same time simplified the administration of its diverse computer infrastructure. They also found a solution that is open, flexible and scalable.
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QinetiQ
United Kingdom
QinetiQ was founded from the United Kingdom government's Defence Research and Evaluation Agency and has transitioned to the private sector as a defence and security technology company. They work with vast document stores such as electronic books, journals, and academic references, subscribed to by QinetiQ for industry insight and complementary research. They recently implemented a central repository for search and collaboration in the form of its enterprise portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. As a result, they have found the Ecma Office Open XML formats will enable them to enforce policies related to security, privacy, and document management on sections of a document and exchange information with more confidence. They will also be able to look at a specific piece of information or research and see everything that's related to it across a vast pool of information—users will see information in context, rather than in separate documents.
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Park Group
United Kingdom
Park Group is a specialty financial services company in the United Kingdom offering their customers budgeting and investing alternatives. In March 2008, they plan on deploying Microsoft Office 2007 to all of their 220 employees. As a result, Park Group believes that Ecma Office Open XML will help reduce their storage needs and improve their data exchanges.
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easyJet
United Kingdom
One of the largest low-cost European airline companies, easyJet, produce and publish their important airline manuals to the airline's network using XML. The use of XML will enable them to easily transition to Ecma Office Open XML formats—an open international standard specification. By using Open XML they will benefit by being able to share the data and information with their partners across multiple systems, reduce storage and bandwidth needs, increase efficiency, and improve overall onboard standards and safety.
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BeyondIT Co., Ltd.
Japan
Japanese based company, BeyondIT Co., Ltd., developed an anti-electromagnetic wave information protection software product called CrypType that helps prevent information leakage from monitor displays. This new technology was built as an add-on to Microsoft Office 2007 and utilizes Open XML. BeyondIT Co., Ltd. believes that Open XML was extremely helpful in reducing development time and offers their customers anti-electromagnetic wave information protection across all Office system products. According to Yasu Miyata, CEO and President of BeyondIT Co., Ltd., "Without Open XML, it would have been difficult to create software like this."
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Nuance Communications, Inc.
Burlington, Massachusetts, USA
Nuance Communications is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Nuance sought a better way to translate data for customer use with many of the most common productivity applications. Before, this translation required IT professionals to use binary formats, which were difficult to work with. By adopting an Open XML-based text format, Nuance developers and customers’ IT staff benefit from an open format that is easier to use and modify.
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OXML: Connecting People, Data, and Diverse Systems
Indonesia
This case study includes quotes from a growing number of end users and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) representing ten major business organizations in Indonesia who collectively support Open XML. They found that Open XML has given them an open, XML-based document standard which has helped address their current problems and future needs.
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NSD CO., LTD.
Japan
NSD Co., Ltd. is one of Japan’s most popular system integrators, providing solutions that combine package products and software development to fulfill customer requirements. The Open XML file format gave NSD the opportunity to provide full-scale solutions enabled with the latest Microsoft Office 2007 system. As General Manager, Mr. Ikezawa states, “Being open means there is no black box and fewer product limitations, so Open XML can work with various types of systems.” This flexibility fits well with NSD’s business goals. The case study also highlights the customers they have helped and the back end opportunity they see with further Open XML solution development endeavors.
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NEC Learning, Ltd.
Japan
NEC Learning, Ltd. is a training company that mainly provides personnel development, training services, and e-learning in Japan. Due to the strength of customer demand for solution training for Office administrators and developers, they are one of the pioneers in offering training content related to Open XML.
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Advance Software Corporation
Japan
Japanese based company, Advance Software Corporation, creates software development tools and utility software such as data converters. They developed ExcelCreator 2007 and VB-Report 2007, two revolutionary tools that support file generation and form design utilizing Open XML. ExcelCreator 2007 can handle board coordinate spaces more than 1,000 times greater than was previously possible, and create highly expressive files applied with specifications and themes in full color. VB-Report 2007 enables users to exploit the rich decoration function of Excel 2007 to design forms. Advance Software Corporation believes that by using Open XML file format the possibilities of data use will expand well beyond these two products.
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D&I System Consulting, Inc.
Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Japan
D&I System Consulting, Inc. is a Japanese based consulting company with its core business in software development and system consulting, specializing in business intelligence and geographic information systems services. Many of their corporate clients use Microsoft Office products in the Windows environment extensively; however, due to cost restraints, quite a few also use the Linux operating system on their servers. D&I System Consulting began developing user-friendly documents for both people and computers by defining customized XML and mapping complex documents. Users can simply enter data information as if entering conventional Word text and only the XML data entered in the document is extracted and stored in the database. This data is used for analysis or data entry assistance for other documents, helping to eliminate manual re-entry of data. Their developers can also use, Open XML in languages such as JAVA and Perl/PHP to access data within documents.
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Fractal:Edge
London, England
London-based Fractal Edge developed a product to offer businesses a fast and efficient way to view complex pivot table information. Developers used the Ecma Office Open XML file format to incorporate specifications for a Fractal Map of this data. Developers can use the greater transparency of the file format to navigate its parts and relationships, locate information, and manipulate content. They can also use the more extensible formats to develop interoperability between applications.
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iT-Workplace
Nottingham, England
Software vendor iT-Workplace develops online analytical processing (OLAP) reporting solutions for developers and business users in the United Kingdom. In 2007, they released Intelligencia for Microsoft Word 2007 that embeds reporting functionality usually only available in Microsoft Office Excel and database tools into a word processing-based format. Users can simply create a wide-range of business reports using Microsoft Word 2007 skills. Based on the internationally recognized standard, Ecma Office Open XML, the front-end application sources “live” data directly from a Microsoft SQL Server database. When the database is updated, the corresponding data is modified in the Word document, and vice-versa. What’s more, this dynamic data can interact with other systems easily exchanging data between office applications and enterprise business systems. Employees can improve productivity by publishing, searching, and reusing information more quickly and accurately in the application they choose, as long as it supports reading and writing XML; developers can write the information about all the data connections into the Word document itself so that when the document is reopened, data integration continues without interruption. There is no need for a separate data file because all the configuration information is written back into the Word document itself.
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Money Partners
United Kingdom
United Kingdom-based Money Partners deployed X-Merge developed by Dot Net Solutions. It uses the XML file format to help employees and brokers quickly create detailed templates and forms with familiar Microsoft Office Word tools. As a result, the XML-based system is much faster, delivering an impressive throughput of hundreds of documents a minute. In addition, most of the company’s business analysts who regularly use Word can now manage templates themselves without expensive development time.
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Florida House of Representatives
Florida, United States
The Florida House of Representatives has benefitted from using Office Open XML file formats when they incorporated a pilot project using Microsoft Office 2007 system. Prior, they were finding that during their debate process multiple amendments to bills made by senators were creating delays to the process and errors. Office Open XML helped them complete their tasks 60% faster, with fewer errors, reduced training costs, and provided a more effective search capability solution.
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Skyfish, Inc.
Japan
Skyfish, Inc., is a software application development company based in Japan and a certified member of the Microsoft Accessible Technology Vendor Program (MATvp). MATvp is aimed at those companies that design, develop, and provide support for accessible technology products that satisfy the needs of schools and corporations who have customers and users with disabilities or functional limitations. Skyfish recently added JukeDoX, a document file reader software product for the visually impaired, to their line of products. JukeDoX was built on Open XML technology and only took a half a year to develop—a much shorter development period than initially budgeted for. According to Skyfish, data can be safely written and JukeDoX has excellent interoperability due to Open XML technology.
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MS Technology, Inc.
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
MS Technology is a software development company that specializes in imaging and image-processing technology for primarily High Tech and Electronics Manufacturing customers in India and the United States. In 2006, their customers demanded a platform-independent document format and better safeguards against corrupted files in two of their products, MSTViewer and MSTJavaViewer, which give users the ability to open different file formats, save documents in different formats, and annotate documents. As of October 2007, about 12 enterprise customers in India—each with nearly 50,000 worldwide users—take advantage of support for Open XML in the MS Technology MSTViewer and MSTJavaViewer. The results have been greater time savings and cost savings, better handling of corrupted documents, decreased storage needs, and increased choice for improved customer satisfaction. The company plans to officially release its Open XML-ready products in December 2007 and also plans to use Open XML in its reporting mechanism as the company moves into the medical imaging industry.
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Intrasphere Technologies
New York, New York, USA
Intrasphere Technologies, a consulting services and solutions company, helps life sciences organizations achieve maximum business performance while satisfying regulatory mandates. Intrasphere recently worked with pharmaceutical customers who were experiencing problems with having to use an XML editing tool to edit the drug labels and rendering tools to try to convert an XML document into an Office Word document to adhere to drug labeling regulations. They also had customers who needed to produce clinical trial protocol disclosure forms who encountered the same challenges as the labeling authors. In August 2006, Intrasphere identified a potential solution: using Open XML Formats and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to support structured content management. The new solution, PharmaCM, can be configured to support clinical trial registries and drug labeling and provides an easy solution for managing clinical protocol registration.
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Indigo Corporation
Tokyo, Japan
Indigo released a new version of DocuDyne, an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution for managing Microsoft Office Word documents. The latest version was released in conjunction with Microsoft Office 2007 and utilizes Office Open XML's unique data format to help efficiently manage document components. As a result, they are better able to meet their customer's needs to revalue and reuse documented data stored across the enterprise more effectively.
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The American Red Cross
Washington, D.C., USA
The American Red Cross is piloting a technology solution donated by Microsoft, 3Sharp, and Z5 Technologies to help improve its ability to collect vital information at shelters during a disaster. The solution uses Open XML Formats and is designed to automate forms and upload information in a way that is easy to use and quick to deploy. The objective is to provide small data payloads for fast, cost-effective uploading through satellite link using Z5 Nomad, a rapidly deployable, portable incident command device that includes a satellite terminal to guarantee communication capability anywhere in the world. Testing is intended to take place at select Red Cross shelters during the 2007 hurricane season.
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Workshare
London, England
Workshare, an information security company, has developed its Protect Enterprise solution on Ecma Office Open XML standard. This solution automates all document filtering processes, providing customers all around the world with a more resilient, flexible tool. Workshare dismissed using ODF, also an international standard, in favor of Open XML for a number of reasons. Firstly, Open XML supports backwards compatibility—businesses can convert their archive of documents, already written in previous formats, to an open, modern format—not in the scope of ODF. Secondly, Workshare customers are less likely to circulate ODF documents because most of these businesses use Microsoft Office. Lastly, with Open XML, Workshare was able to build more flexible and robust solutions for their customers, as XML separates content from the applications in which it is created.
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GFI Progiciels
France
GFI Progiciels, a French management solution provider for the public sector and local governments, wanted to increase performance of its solutions and decrease time-to-market. It migrated its management product line to the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and used Open XML Formats to quickly create a robust solution with improved document management features such as easy conversion to various formats and improved security and storage. GFI Progiciels, a subsidiary of GFI Informatique, provides solutions for accounting and finances, human resources management, time management, and training for local governments.
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LASCOM
France
French software developer LASCOM used Open XML Formats to boost its competitiveness by offering customers complete control over project and product cycles, to simplify decision making, and to free them from the need for specialized development. These are distinct advantages for industry giants like LASCOM customers Ariane and Yoplait, for which these critical processes were slow, costly, and error-prone. LASCOM is a software developer that provides project and product life-cycle management and business process management solutions for industries such as engineering, transportation, aerospace, and manufacturing.
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Sylogis
France
A publisher of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for property management, Sylogis, is taking advantage of the Open XML Formats through integration with its own software offerings. By using Open XML, the company hopes to offer its clients timesaving, faster report generation with a familiar user interface, and easy access to all the modules in its product line. Founded in 1982, Sylogis posted €8.2 million (U.S.$11 million) in annual sales in 2006. It publishes software to manage everyday real estate activities and to manage costs and develop properties.
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Winsight
Paris, France
Software developer Winsight wanted to integrate its reporting tool ReportSmith.net with Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet software to satisfy customer demand, but initially considered the project to be too complex and costly. But with the availability of Open XML Formats, it was able to integrate its reporting tool in just a few weeks. What's more, the new open architecture encourages better application scalability. Founded in 1998, Winsight, a subsidiary of Winwise is a solution provider that designs software and offers services, training, and consulting, specializing in scalable business intelligence tools.
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UK National Archives
Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England
As the official archive for England, Wales, and the central UK government, The National Archives holds records ranging from parchment and paper scrolls to digital files and archived websites. The National Archives is supporting Open XML to face the challenge of digital preservation, and to raise awareness of this problem across the whole IT industry.
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Bluespring Software
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
By using Open XML, Bluespring Software was able to reduce its development time from an average of two years to two months, saving U.S. $150,000 on development alone. A technology provider of business process management suite solutions, Bluespring was also able to offer customers no-coding applications, so that employees could adjust to changes in business process requirements themselves, making their business more agile.
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SoftFluent
Paris, France
French solution provider SoftFluent has taken advantage of the new capabilities available in the standardized Open XML Formats to create Calypteo, a customizable energy-management application that helps clients' management applications be more collaborative and interoperable. With Open XML, any application that supports XML can access and work with data in Calypteo—whether it uses a Web client or a rich client.
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Datawatch Corporation
Chelmsford, Massachusetts, United States
Independent software vendor Datawatch was developing Monarch 9.0, a tool used to mine the data from reports in a variety of formats into spreadsheets. By writing its own export engine for Ecma Open XML Formats, it cut down on development time by 85 percent, enjoyed better integration, and easier regulatory compliance.
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TGE Gas Engineering GmbH
Bonn, Germany
TGE Gas Engineering GmbH builds facilities for transporting and processing gas. Its customers have high standards for project documentation content and formatting; even small mistakes are costly. The company worked with S&L Netzwerktechnik GmbH to build a solution based on Open XML Formats that automatically integrates existing content with the correct templates. Now TGE engineers can create documentation in seconds, not minutes, with much greater formatting accuracy.
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GulfStream Bioinformatics
Lexington, Massachusetts, USA
GulfStream Bioinformatics provides software that medical researchers use to aggregate and manage their data. The company wanted to make it easier to export data from back end systems into spreadsheets, but the development time that was required made adding that functionality expensive. The company will use the Open XML Formats in its new product versions to give users the functionality they need, while decreasing estimated development time by 75 percent.
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ILOG
Gentilly, France
"Open XML lets us run business rules directly on .NET, Java, the Web, and any kind of application," says Cyril Mathey, BRMS Product Architect at ILOG. The updated ILOG Rules for .NET uses Open XML to help expand profiles for decision makers, analysts, accountants, marketing departments, and business rules managers while reducing creation and modification time for business rules and offering dynamic business policies and increased productivity.
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Lieberman Software Corporation
Los Angeles, California, USA
Lieberman Software Corporation develops security, management, reporting, and auditing tools for businesses worldwide. They needed to build tools that could scale in size, accurately represent the data, and provide useful information for their customers. To help meet these demands, Lieberman Software decided to switch to Open XML Formats as a primary output format for logging complex data from its applications versus open document format (ODF). They found Open XML more viable for their business needs. "My company is not supported by venture capital, so we need to make a profit on our products. The fact is that virtually all of our major customers use the Microsoft Office system as their desktop standard. With such a universal base already in place, there is no justification for us to support ODF," said Philip Lieberman, President. As a result, Open XML has helped Lieberman Software produce rich data formats, future archiving capabilities, and backward compatibility while reducing the overall time to market and costs.
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