EVENT FLASH

Microsoft Tries to Corral a New Market With Longhorn: "Metro" Opens Opportunities for ISVs and Printer Manufacturers While Challenging Adobe's PDF

Susan Feldman, Joshua Duhl, Keith Kmetz, Angele Boyd

IN THIS EVENT FLASH

At the recent Microsoft WinHEC event, Microsoft announced "Metro," a new file format and family of technologies designed to facilitate electronic document-based workflow and printing, as a planned capability for the Longhorn operating system release. This Flash explores the implications of this announcement – what is "Metro", what is Microsoft's intention with it, and who benefits from it.

SITUATION OVERVIEW

As Microsoft and other vendors take aim at information work, it has become clear that tasks that are document and information based can use some more advanced features. For that reason, we see a plethora of new offerings, including Adobe's evolving Intelligent Documents Platform, Verity's new Liquid Office, Microsoft's InfoPath, as well as tools for dynamic enterprise publishing. All of these new applications recognize that information is not static. That it is not a beginning nor an end point, but rather one piece of a process, and that information tasks must be integrated into a larger workflow. In general, these new software products are therefore XML-based in order to enable easier integration among software applications.

On April 25th, Microsoft announced "Metro," a family of technologies based on open standards offering a unified framework for electronic document-based workflows as an intended enhancement to Longhorn. "Metro" is intended as an authoring and information exchange platform centered around a new document format. The complete family of technologies includes the following:

- A specification for a fixed-layout document format based on XML
- A "viewer" to view, manage, and print files
- A print-to-file converter for creating the files from any Microsoft Windows-based application
- A set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to incorporate "Metro" technologies and documents with traditional applications, the Web and computer hardware
- A print pipeline with an integrated spool format and printer-page description language intended to speed up and improve the fidelity of print jobs
- An updated driver model for "Metro"-consuming printers

"Metro," like Adobe's PDF format, will output with fidelity what a user sees on the computer screen. It is page based and delivers the fixed layout specified in the document. It promises speedier printing through reuse of repeated objects in, for instance, a PowerPoint file, and it will use .ZIP file as a standard compressed container format to hold the components of a "Metro" document and facilitate file transfer and sharing. Microsoft claims it will also deliver improved print quality over what is currently available, particularly with support for more advanced graphics, enhanced color output and printing from the Web. It will also support digital signatures within documents and respect Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) for content protection, when applied to "Metro" documents. The new format requires WinFX. The viewer, provided to view "Metro" files works only on Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP, or higher. Microsoft intends to offer developers a royalty–free license to develop "Metro"-enabled applications or new drivers to render the format.

FUTURE OUTLOOK

Microsoft dominates the content authoring market with its Microsoft Office products, installed on over 80% of desktops, according to IDC's research. On first glance, it would appear that Microsoft's intention with "Metro" is not only their latest attempt to offer an interchange file format (remember .RTF?) for Microsoft Office users, but to facilitate the information worker's use of Office products. However it goes much farther. It is clear that Metro also takes aim at Adobe, PDF and the PDF ecosystem. Microsoft is taking advantage of its dominant operating system position and market clout to move into another market. The rendering engine for "Metro" takes advantage of newly created capabilities designed into the new presentation sub-system (code named "Avalon") in the Longhorn operating system. Doing so allows Microsoft to design an OS optimized for "Metro".

Because of Microsoft's clout, if "Metro" makes it into the version of Longhorn due out in the second half of 2006, "Metro" should gain some traction. Several major printer manufacturers and ISVs were quoted in the product announcement as either evaluating "Metro" or intending to develop products for it. These included: Brother Information and Document Co., Canon Inc., Fuji Xerox engineers working for the Xerox Group, Global Graphics, HP, Monotype Imaging Inc., Peerless Systems Corp., Ricoh Company Ltd., Seiko Epson Corp., Software Imaging, Xerox and Zoran Corp. Some of these printer manufacturers have been working with Microsoft to develop new printer drivers, which will be required. Today's printers will not support the new format. As a result, over time, "Metro" will drive a new round of printer and MFP sales. Customers will make investments in the new printers and MFPs, to the extent that new drivers are not made available for downloading and to the extent that they prefer Metro to PDF. For many, PDF will be good enough for use with their old printers until their next refresh cycle. So who really benefits from "Metro"? Clearly Microsoft, printer manufacturers and Microsoft development partners do. But what about the users, the information workers?

"Metro" is intended for cross-platform document workflows. Yet, out of the box, use of the new file format works only on certain Windows platforms, a matter of some concern in a world that depends on easy file transfer among all operating systems and platforms. For instance, IDC estimates that Windows 2000 was on 80.6 million desktops in 2004. Windows 2000, and prior versions of Windows, will be left out in the cold, as will be any Linux and Unix users. While the advanced graphics capabilities would appear to be of great interest to creative professionals in the publishing and design sectors, the majority of these designers are Macintosh-based, and they too will not be able to use the format or view the results of someone else's work in it. Unless or until Microsoft or some third-party develops a "Metro" viewer for Apple machines and other operating systems, "Metro" will not fulfill this cross-platform document workflow vision.

In order for information workers to have success and have real cross-platform document workflows, broad adoption and implementation of the "Metro" specification in a wide range of software applications and hardware products is required. The royalty-free license is one key to this success. The others will be training and product certification so that products are really able to exchange and render the "Metro" formatted documents. In addition, consumers who want to improve the speed and print quality of their digital images should also be interested in this development, and the format may therefore drive sales of both printers and new operating systems, as well as desktop computers. Therefore, Metro, as a driver for Microsoft's business makes sense.

However, even though it appears that "Metro" takes aim at Adobe, at PDF, and Adobe's Acrobat products, IDC believes Microsoft will have a difficult time overcoming the fifteen years of PDF development, innovation, and learning accumulated by Adobe around documents and document workflows, and the three quarters of a billion desktops that already use Acrobat or the free Acrobat reader to exchange documents across platforms. Adobe continues to innovate around the Intelligent Document Platform adding, for example, support for 2D barcodes, enterprise rights management that works across platforms and between enterprises, and collaboration capabilities. It has steadily advanced PDF from a postscript printer format to a full-featured container that can carry both XML and postscript information and integrate with multiple applications, as well as hold video, audio and CAD drawings. If the "Metro" viewer and the format are not available to any platform, as Adobe's Acrobat and Acrobat Reader are, "Metro" will continue to be a PC-only platform that leaves an important portion of the information worker world out of the workflow. In addition, PDF/A is an accepted archival standard. Microsoft will have to scramble to overcome the fact that PDF and the PDF/A version has already become a true cross-platform and legal norm that accounts for nearly ten percent of the content on the Web.

Will Metro railroad Adobe's PDF into obscurity? Not likely. At least not in the short term.


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