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I was in transit to Germany when the news of Microsoft's Interop Vendor Alliance winged its way into my inbox and prohibitive WLAN pricing at the conference hotel meant I haven't been able to comment until now.

This is just the latest in a series of interoperability-related announcements from Microsoft, including the formation of its Interoperability Customer Executive Council back in June and the more recent agreement with Novell. These announcements all reflect a growing pragmatism in Microsoft's approach to addressing the concerns of technology adopters, particularly larger organisations awash with a broad range of heterogeneous hardware and software assets: "Integrated Innovation" may be in Microsoft's DNA but reality demands interoperability around the integrated stack.

25 or so hardware and software vendors are currently participating the in Interop Vendor Alliance (why Interop Vendor, which suggests they are vendors of interoperability?) and to be honest the majority of the names are unsurprising - although some of the ommissions are - since they are already close of partners of Microsoft, including:

* AMD (but no Intel!)
* Centeris (Linux/Windows management)
* Novell (they had to be for obvious reasons)
* Quest (management, including Linux/Unix integration)
* SugarCRM (open source on Windows - no JBoss though)
* Sun Microsystems (a continuation of the 2004 agreement)
* XenSource (virtualisation)

BEA is also there, which is perhaps surprising - until you cast your mind back to last August when BEA acquired Plumtree, whose portal technology (now BEA AquaLogic User Interaction) is equally at home on .NET and Java.

So what's so interesting about a bunch of partners coming together to focus on interoperability? To my mind it's the approach. This is not about the slow, vendor-dominated establishment of interoperability standards for the future. Instead, and no doubt informed by the feedback from the Interoperability Customer Executive Council, the alliance will focus on real-world interoperability scenarios based on deployed technologies, testing of those scenarios and the publication of best-practice advice and guidance.

Good intentions are one thing. Results are another. The alliance is going to have to deliver if the very people it is trying to address don't quickly perceive it as another vendor marketing wheeze paying lip service to their very real requirements. The other key challenge, and perhaps a more significant one, is for Microsoft and mutual customers (the more effective route) to corral the likes of EMC, IBM, Oracle, SAP and many others into the alliance.

Organisations with any reasonable investment in Microsoft technology should at least monitor progress and prefereably exert pressure for results and participation from their other strategic suppliers.

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