A new report published by the Burton Group about XML-based office document formats touts Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format and questions the relevance of ODF, asserting that the ISO-standardized document format used in office suites from Sun, IBM, and other vendors will be relegated to "a relatively minor role" as OOXML gains traction.

The report asserts that "ODF addresses only a subset of what most organizations do with productivity applications today" and contends that the evolution of ODF will be "slow and complex" because of the dominant role of Sun in the ODF ecosystem. The Burton Group also questions the validity of the common perception that ODF and open-source office suites will gain acceptance in budget-constrained environments like government agencies in developing countries, citing Microsoft's aggressive pricing strategies in regions that are ripe for open-source adoption. The report suggests that the only value in ODF-based office suites for enterprise users is that companies will be able to use the threat of adoption as negotiating leverage to get better pricing from Microsoft.