The announcement of support comes during interesting times for Microsoft. In a fight to the finish that was probably watched by more government organizations than Microsoft would probably care to know about, the Redmond-based company's Office productivity suite was indirectly bounced from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' list of approved products for the 173 state agencies that employed some 80,000 people. Massachusetts didn't de-list Office per se. They instituted a policy that requires public documents to be stored and/or exchanged in one of two file formats – the OASIS-backed OpenDocument Format ODF) and Adobe's PDF. Since MS-Office support neither, it was effectively bumped from Massachusetts' list of approved products. In true government fashion, not only did the decision affect all state agencies and employees, but the many thousands of contractors that do business with the Commonwealth as well.
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