Microsoft announced today that it has delivered on a number of promises it made earlier this year regarding the interoperability and openness of its products. Among them are 1.0 releases of technical documentation on the protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Microsoft also released 5,000 pages of new documentation today on the binary file formats in Office, putting the company well down the path of its new interoperability initiative.

"Microsoft's cumulative posting of approximately 50,000 pages of technical documentation on MSDN provides consistent, open access for all developers, which enhances the ease and opportunities for working with Microsoft's high-volume products," said Microsoft's general manager of Interoperability Craig Shank in a statement. "Moreover, our work with partners, competitors and customers to engage in the technical nuts-and-bolts of real-world interoperability provides great ongoing opportunities for collaboration to address the challenges of today's diverse IT environment."

The 1.0 releases of technical docs for Office, SharePoint Server, and Exchange Server follow Microsoft's preliminary releases earlier this year. The company says that it took feedback from the community on how to improve the documentation between then and now, resulting in a comprehensive resource for developers working on technology that communicates with Microsoft's. Of course, Microsoft also made note of which protocols are covered by existing patents or patent applications, in addition to its "reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms" for those who will be developing for commercial distribution.

The 5,000 pages of new documentation published today cover data portability in Office, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Microsoft says that this, in addition to documentation that it has already provided, will "make it easier for developers to enable applications to read and write files in these binary file formats, thus enhancing the ease of moving data from one application to another."

The move should help to quell the concerns of the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, which has complained loudly about Office's lack of interoperability with other products since late last year. The European Commission also announced a new antitrust probe into Microsoft over interoperability in January which, among other things, alleged that the new Office Open XML does not play nice with competing products.

Because of Microsoft's long and checkered history in the areas of openness and interoperability, critics will keep scrutinizing the company in the years ahead. The company appears to be working to make good on its promises, however, so all eyes will be on Microsoft's continued progress in the coming months and years.