Structured data interchange is what Microsoft is labeling their XML model for Office 2007. Structured data interchange as the basis for a unified data language will enable output from any type of application to be interpreted by any other type of application theoretically regardless of the operating system or hardware.
Based in part on SGML, the model will require an interpreter and can accommodate any type of data. That is, it can be images, video, formatted document, database information supporting tables etc. Really an advance on OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) this is independent of operating system or hardware (as far as it goes).
The XML model which Microsoft is proposing along with the W3C recommendation for XML will have far reaching consequences for all platforms and users.