Microsoft, Google Back Apache Ossie With 60-Plus Firms for AI Data Portability

3 articles · Updated · InfoWorld · Oct 1

Apache Ossie has added Microsoft and Google to a coalition of more than 60 companies building an open format for exchanging semantic models across data, analytics and AI platforms.
Ossie uses JSON and YAML in a hub-and-spoke design, so vendors can map their own semantic layers to one common specification instead of maintaining point-to-point converters.
Microsoft is building a two-way Power BI converter and pushing DAX support, while Google said it is joining the project and noted BigQuery/GoogleSQL is already recognized in the specification.
Analysts said broader backing could cut repeated semantic engineering, reduce metric drift and make agentic AI apps more consistent by carrying one versioned definition of business metrics across tools.
Version 0.2 is still an Apache incubator draft, and experts warned portability will not guarantee identical results because vendor-specific logic, governance controls and execution behavior can still preserve lock-in.

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Will Apache Ossie truly end vendor lock-in, or just create a new bottleneck for complex data governance and row-level security?

Can a unified semantic layer finally stop AI agents from hallucinating business metrics across fragmented enterprise data systems?