The Internet, especially its World Wide Web (WWW) aspect, has been able to flourish solely because of the use of Open Standards.

Information gets presented in forms that anyone can use, without having to use a particular vendor's software.

Various commercial entities (especially Microsoft) have tried to 'own' the Internet via proprietary schemes, and fortunately all such attempts have effectively failed.

We care about Open Standards, and so should your business - unless you're happy with being locked into expensive proprietary systems.

Open Standards give you a wider choice of technologies and ensure that your data will be accessible later, without requiring vendor cooperation.

For a long time it's been feasible to run virtually all businesses using only Open-Standards-based technology.

So don't let suppliers lock you into proprietary data processing systems. And wherever feasible get important data exported from proprietary systems while you still can.

An excellent source of related information is OASIS.

A serious risk to your data is "Software as a Service" (SaaS), otherwise known as "being Cloud-based".

With which your data resides on computers owned and controlled by others and which you can't directly access.

Whereby your access to your data can be turned off in an instant. By accident or by design.

Furthermore, resarch showns that most Cloud-using businesses spend significantly more than they need to, mainly because many Cloud-providers don't exactly make it easy for businesses to determine what they're actually using.