SANTA CLARA, CA -- More than 400 industry insiders gathered here yesterday for Microsoft's first Global High Tech Summit, a forum that looked at challenges and trends facing high tech manufacturing.

In a joint effort to improve supplier collaboration, Microsoft and Intel announced proposals for the next-generation of open, interoperable business standards for small-to-medium enterprise supplier collaboration, based on the Office Open XML formats.

Under the management of the open standards body Ecma International, the Open XML document formats are now being finalized as a worldwide standard by leading tech companies including Intel. The document format standard offers flexible support for integration external XML information, which is critical to RosettaNet requirements.

Also announced was the establishment of a customer advisory board composed of companies representing various market segments, including Applied Materials, Flextronics, Juniper Networks, Nvidia, Xilinx and others.

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