REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 15, 1997 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Remedy Intelligent Staffing, a national provider of temporary staffing services, joined an ever-growing list of corporations standardizing on the Microsoft® Visual Basic® 5.0 programming system for creating enterprise solutions. Remedy is using Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition and other Microsoft technologies based on Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) to create the company’s core business technology solution, RemX2000. This system seamlessly integrates a centralized database – which stores critical data on clients, temporary employees and billing information – with its PeopleSoft billing and payroll system. This scalable enterprise solution will maximize integration and decrease total cost of ownership as Remedy deploys the solution to more than 5,000 desktops in over 700 locations by the year 2000.
Remedy’s business demands a reliable information network that the company can draw information from to deploy temporary employees faster, thus meeting clients’ needs more quickly and efficiently. RemX2000 will allow Remedy to connect its more than 300 existing independent offices to one centralized database. Visual Basic and COM provide seamless integration among PeopleSoft, custom applications and the Internet. This integration gives all users central and remote access to the most current information, providing the company with a competitive edge critical to its highly time-sensitive business.
“We were looking for the best-of-breed standardized approach to use as the basis for this work environment,” said Norm Leibson, vice president of information technology at Remedy. “Hands down, Visual Basic 5.0 was the only tool that could provide the developer productivity and end-user performance we needed. It is the best tool for the project, providing the flexibility, productivity and system performance to meet our goals and rigorous schedules.”
Key features of Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition that fit Remedy’s development and design criteria include the following:
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Visual database tools. These offer an ideal RAD environment for working with databases in client/server applications and allow developers to connect to multiple databases.
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User Connection Designer. Enhanced query management technology supports a higher degree of integration and team-based development.
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Visual Modeler. Tight integration allows developers to rapidly create distributed applications with reusable components.
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Microsoft Transaction Server. Developers can build three-tiered component applications, including integrated-transaction and object-management systems.
These features enable the Remedy development team to create scalable enterprise solutions faster and offer increased flexibility in building and distributing components. With these enterprise features, Remedy’s developers can visually model and modify designs, access databases, and generate complex code automatically. Using these tools to construct a system that incorporates reusable components, Remedy will continue to increase productivity as it grows.
“Remedy, a leader in the temporary staffing industry, is able to operate efficiently because it stays on top of emerging technologies,” said Mike Risse, group product manager, developer tools at Microsoft. “We designed enterprise versions of our products to take full advantage of the Internet and new technologies such as Windows NT® , Microsoft Transaction Server and Microsoft SQL Server
™
– Remedy demonstrates exactly how well our products deliver on this to achieve business value.”
Remedy Implements Phase One Back-Office System
Remedy is implementing the first phase of the RemX2000 business solution by installing the PeopleSoft payroll and billing system on the Windows NT Server network operating system. Designed to operate companywide, RemX2000 is the first enterprise-scale PeopleSoft application to run on this operating system and the Microsoft SQL Server platform, which were chosen over UNIX and Oracle.
“Remedy is one of the first companies to install the PeopleSoft system on the Windows NT and Microsoft SQL Server platform for an enterprise solution of this scale,” said Sebastian Grady, PeopleSoft vice president of customer services. “We are very excited about this implementation, as it highlights the flexibility and compatibility of these two systems.”
Remedy will use Visual Basic both to develop the screen and forms for the client side and to create the business rules and logic for the server side of the application. The client side of the Visual Basic-based application will run in Microsoft Internet Explorer and will be integrated with Office 97, providing a seamless interface to users. The back-end data will reside on a centralized Windows NT-based server at corporate headquarters and include the server portion of the Visual Basic-based application, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Microsoft Transaction Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Windows NT. This multitier architecture lowers deployment costs, adds flexibility and scales up as the company prepares for a 250 percent growth rate over the next three years. The new system will ensure that data is readily available to everyone who needs it – corporate staff, field staff, temporary employees and clients.
About Remedy Intelligent Staffing
Founded in 1965 and headquartered in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., Remedy is an innovative staffing network comprising over 200 offices throughout the United States, plus an additional 140 on-site locations within client companies. Remedy provides highly qualified workers to U.S. businesses along with the systems and technologies to manage them effectively. For more information, visit the Remedy Web site at (http://www.remedystaff.com/)
About Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0
Visual Basic 5.0 is Microsoft’s flagship product for its new developer tools suite, the Visual Studio
™
97 development system. As the premier rapid application development tool, Microsoft Visual Basic is used by more than 3 million developers. Microsoft Visual Basic is the most efficient tool for creating traditional client/server and Web-based applications and components. For more information, visit the Visual Basic Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic/ .
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
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