The uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the Battle of the File Suffixes will leave many risk-averse IT managers concluding that saving documents in both the Microsoft-backed Office OpenXML and Sun/IBM-supported ODF will be the way forward for archiving.

Making documents machine-readable for future generations is vital but, sadly, software vendors offer a confusing flowchart of options.

Novell’s distribution of OpenOffice.org saves files in ODF but can read OpenXML, and the company is also a supporter of Microsoft’s OpenXML/ODF Translator Project that is intended to bridge the gap between the two competing formats.

In its WordPerfect Office suite, Corel has said it plans to support opening and editing of both formats. Meanwhile, Sun has a plug-in that lets Word users read, edit and save in ODF.

Future readers of critical documents might well be confused as they attempt to redo formatting and understand why large companies saw fit to resort to politicking rather than serve users. Today’s buyers must mandate peace and guarantees of interoperability, even if that means resorting to binding contracts.