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I mentioned last week that Microsoft had re-joined the OGC. Today at the GeoInt conference the OGC made it official with this press release. The beefy portion is here:

Through its involvement with OGC, Microsoft is able to ensure the geospatial interoperability of its technology, including its flagship geospatial offerings -- the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform - and Microsoft SQL Server 2008, which is scheduled to ship in the second quarter of calendar year 2008. Microsoft will submit the SQL Server 2008 geometry datatype for compliance to the Open GIS® Simple Features for SQL standard, a significant move towards ensuring that geospatial data can be seamlessly layered upon and integrated within SQL Server 2008. By making its products OpenGIS compatible Microsoft will support both developers and users who wish to work with the most extensive assortment of the world's geospatial data resources currently available.