By Bill Gates, Microsoft Executive Mail
Microsoft's product interoperability strategy: "First, we continue to support customers' needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of 'interoperability by design' across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities... The XML-based architecture for Web services, known as WS-* ('WS-Star'), is being developed in close collaboration with dozens of other companies in the industry including IBM, Sun, Oracle and BEA. This standard set of protocols significantly reduces the cost and complexity of connecting disparate systems, and it enables interoperability not just within the four walls of an organization, but also across the globe."
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/02-03interoperability.asp
Amen Bill! As long as this doesn't covertly imply "Windows Specificity" by way of "Interoperability" becoming a "Windows Unique Selling Point"!
As per usual, the devil will be in the implementation details of your company's products.