Hi,
 I heard about the first annoucements of Alembic (http://code.google.com/p/alembic/),
something to replace FBX and Collada, but I have some concerns, seeing how long it
takes to have full Collada support in Poser, Carrara etc., if people add another format.

Does anyone know if Alembic offers more new features, apart from being a more compact
 storage (compared to Collada)?

Best regards,
   Michael

It looks like it has a different goal than than FBX / Collada.

FBX / Collada are file interchange formats that allow artist to freely move between DAZStudio, Motion Builder, Cinema4D et al. with rigs intact and editable. You could create your figure in D|S, animate in Motion Builder, and fine tune / tweak your animations in Cinema alongside in physics and particle simulations that Cinema can create.

Alembic appears to be similar but more efficient to what PoserFusion does for 3DS Max: the animation is created in (insert program here) but rendered in (insert other program here) with no ability to tweak the character animation since the "baked vertex information" don't carry their animation rigs with them.

Point oven already does this and is widely supported.