Optaros Inc., an open source software consulting and integration firm, today announced that it is an inaugural member of the Open Document Format Alliance (ODF Alliance). The ODF Alliance is an organization dedicated to promoting open solutions for document formats since documents are increasingly created, published, and managed electronically. The ODF Alliance membership consists of broad cross-section of associations, academic institutions, industry and related groups.

The Open Document Format (ODF) standard was developed as an application-independent file format by Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems (OASIS), a vendor-neutral standards developing organization, with the participation of multiple office application vendors. The ODF standard is expected to reach international standardization at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The standard lays out XML formats for office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Multiple products implement ODF, including OpenOffice, StarOffice, Workplace, and KOffice.

The mission of the ODF Alliance is to educate policy makers, IT administrators, and the public on the benefits of ODF with respect to such choice and control. As a member of the ODF Alliance, Optaros will support the mission and expects to contribute case studies and experience with ODF, the use of standards, and open source software.

“We joined the ODF Alliance because as an open source and standards focused systems integrator, we´re finding our government and enterprise customers are interested in ODF,” said Bob Gett, President and CEO of Optaros. “Our customers want to have a choice of vendors for their desktop office suites, and they want to regain control of the creation and management of their mission critical content.”

The complete membership and mission of the ODF Alliance, along with initial educational materials can be found at their web site (www.odfalliance.org).

About Optaros Optaros is a consulting and systems integration firm that helps enterprises solve IT business problems by providing services and solutions that maximize the benefits of open source software. Bringing together experts in creating enterprise IT solutions and experts in the power of open source, Optaros plans and builds business systems that give you better value today and increased control in the future. For more about Optaros, go to www.optaros.com