Judging from a recent flurry of news surrounding the company, Intel’s all about XML these days.  For starters, rather than just talk it up or tinker with a single new tool, the Santa Clara-based organization updated its XML Software Suite.

This brings the processing libraries to version 1.1, and more than a few benefits can be expected as a result.  David Worthington explains that Intel is “seeking to offset bottlenecks in enterprise workloads and providing a benchmark utility that the company says will establish a baseline to compare the performance of XML solutions.”

Also, “Intel focused on delivering better XML parsing and schema validation, as well as making XML Software Suite easier to integrate with Java development software and middleware.”  And the Suite should get along especially well with Intel’s Nehalem architecture, ensuring that it will remain useful for at least a brief period into the future.

The second part of Intel’s apparent focus on XML acts as a further endorsement of XML Software Suite and brings MuleSource, the SOA software specialist, into the mix.  MuleSource and Intel have worked together to create Mule Xpack for Intel XML Software Suite, which provides off-the-shelf integration and additional processing improvements.  What’s more, Mule Xpack can be downloaded for free.

Intel’s XML Software Suite can be had off the bat for a similar price, but after a 30-day trial, users will have to either give it up or fork over $199.

Regardless, it’s been a little while since we’ve seen such a big company doing so much with XML, so these developments come as a nice surprise.  A pun Intel’s PR department cooked up even seems appropriate: the XML community could view them as the “suite XML of success.”

For better or for worse, you can’t keep Microsoft’s Office Open XML down.  The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has rejected appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa, and Venezuela, and approved the format as an international standard.

Opponents don’t have to take the development as a complete defeat; in a statement, the ISO admitted that they put up a good fight, writing, “The adoption process of Office Open XML (OOXML) as an ISO/IEC Standard has generated significant debate related to both technical and procedural issues which have been addressed according to ISO and IEC procedures.”

Also, “Experiences from the ISO/IEC 29500 process will . . . provide important input to ISO and IEC and their respective national bodies and national committees in their efforts to continually improve standards development policies and procedures.”

Just the same, though, none of the recent appeals got the support of two-thirds of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, so the standard should be published within a few weeks’ time.  No further appeals are being allowed.

Microsoft’s shareholders should be happy, at least, considering how much time, effort, and money the company invested in this cause.