I am guessing that pantone is a bunch of colors that are coded a certain way? Isn't there a common mechanism across design software? Like PDF is the platform agnostic way of sharing documents?
There are lots of alternatives --- the Glass Container Manufacturing Institute has a set of swatches which are used for packaging which the industry has agreed on.
That said, there isn't much spot colour work left, and most of what there is, is brand-specific, or done for budgetary reasons (long runs w/ just two colours).