These standards include C# (pronounced C-Sharp), an object-oriented programming language, and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) standard as well as the Common Language Runtime technical report. These publications were enabled by ECMA International, which secured industry support and fast-tracked the specifications through the relevant ISO procedures. Specifications for each technology were developed by Microsoft and co-submitted by Microsoft, Intel and Hewlett-Packard.

"The adoption by ISO/IEC of these ECMA standards is a defining moment in the history of ECMA International, a standards setting body formed more than 40 years ago, and a milestone in the standardisation of innovative programming languages," said Jan van den Beld, Secretary General of ECMA International.

Van den Beld continued: "Microsoft is to be congratulated on giving the industry powerful tools to enable vendor-neutral development of Web services, which are creating new opportunities for application developers and enterprises alike."

Independent research firm Directions on Microsoft (www.directionsonmicrosoft.com) identifies C# as the world's fastest growing programming language.

"We're extremely gratified that ISO/IEC has recognised C# and the CLI as public standards," said John Montgomery, director of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft Corp. "With the ratification of these two application and Web service-development standards by both ECMA International and ISO/IEC, the application development ecosystem has grown richer. Developers are enabled with core Web services technologies that are endorsed by three of the word's most trusted standards organisations."

Microsoft released C# in June 2000. In August, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Intel co-submitted the specifications for CLI and C# to ECMA International's programming language technical committee (TC39). These co-sponsors, together with other ECMA members including IBM, Fujitsu Software and HP, and expert guests, Plum Hall, Monash University, ISE and Ximian, then refined these specifications for approval as ECMA standards.

In December 2001, the ECMA General Assembly approved the first edition of the C# and CLI standards as ECMA-334 and ECMA-335, respectively. A technical report on the CLR, ECMA-TR84, was also approved. ECMA then submitted the two standards and the technical report to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for Fast-Track adoption.

The standards and TR have now been published by ISO/IEC, and will be known formally as ISO/IEC 23270 (C#), ISO/IEC 23271 (CLI) and ISO/IEC TR 23272 (CLI TR).