IDC analysts Per Andersen, Melissa Webster and Thom Rubel polled 200 government and private sector organizations, noting Ecma Office Open XML as the standard showing the most progressive adoption rates in the marketplace, both today and over the next 12 months.

IT managers at large organizations are increasingly interested in employing XML-based standards, including Open XML, among their document standards, according to a study of US and European organizations commissioned by Microsoft Corp. The results of the survey, which polled 200 government and private-sector organizations to better understand which factors drive adoption of open document standards, are available in an IDC white paper.

Survey respondents included key influencers as well as those charged with supporting document standards in 200 organizations (100 in the US and 100 in Europe). Fifty organizations with more than 250 employees were selected from the public sector, another 50 from the commercial sector.

“The survey validates that organizations evaluate and implement XML-based document formats based on a complex set of criteria,” said Jean Paoli, general manager of Interoperability and XML Architecture at Microsoft. “Although we are glad to see strong adoption of Open XML, we realize that individual organizational requirements vary, and interoperability remains critical. Therefore, we continue to promote the development of tools that offer customers a choice in which formats they can use.”

Source: IDC 2007

The full report is available here.