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The Outlook is, errr, open?

I'm now starting to get really concerned about Microsoft.

Just last week, Windows 7 was launched and looks really cool, there are loads of really great things going on in .NET (like MVC and Ajax) and it has now been suggested that Outlook, Microsoft's flagship email and diary collaboration software, may soon be open source.

Oh what is going on?

Outlook stores its data in a big file, called a .pst. This stores e-mails, contacts, calendar events and other Outlook specific information.

In the past you needed Outlook and/or Exchange to use Outlook's data files.

Microsoft are in the process of providing information and specifications about the .pst format, that other companies and developers may use to access the data stored in them. It isn't known when these specifications will become available, but it is seen as a response by Microsoft to the demands from customers for more accessible and portable data.

I've never been a big fan of Outlook and Exchange, but you can see the point of it and, for most companies, it makes some sense. Whilst the applications may be bloated, slow, difficult to manage and prone to security issues, this is mostly within the applications themselves, rather than the data storage itself. What this means is that potentially, Microsoft could release what may be seen as a 'standard' data format for email, calendar and collaborative oftware that could be used in any application or environment.

This should mean that access to Outlook data from other clients, like Thunderbird, will be possible. I'm not sure what value it will bring, but it is another step in the right direction for Microsoft's image.

We could conceivably see 'lite' versions of the format, used for portable or web based devices but until the format is open, we won't really know what we can and can't do with it.

All I know is, there should be some clever Outlook mash-ups coming soon.

 

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