Corporations Embrace Visual Studio 97 Enterprise Edition For Mission-Critical Application Development Projects

Corporations Embrace Visual Studio 97 Enterprise Edition For Mission-Critical Application Development Projects

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 3, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that the Microsoft® Visual Studio® 97 development system – Microsoft’s premier development tool suite for enterprise development projects – is being widely adopted by Fortune 1,000 companies as their tools solution for building business applications addressing a wide variety of scenarios and architectural challenges.

Since its debut in March 1997, Visual Studio 97 has enjoyed tremendous success in the marketplace, particularly among enterprise customers, and has penetrated over 90% of the Fortune 1,000 market, after just eight months of availability. Moreover, Visual Studio 97 Enterprise Edition is now Microsoft’s top-selling enterprise-level tools offering.

Addressing Corporate Application Requirements

Increasingly, organizations are adopting the Windows NT® Server operating system as an application server platform for so-called “enterprise applications” – applications that are widely deployed, must integrate with existing infrastructure and systems, require high scalability, and are most often developed by teams of developers. To meet these requirements, Visual Studio 97 addresses all aspects of development for the Windows® Distributed interNet Architecture (Windows DNA) framework for building multitier applications.

Windows DNA Framework for Building Multitiered Distributed Applications

Windows DNA is a framework for building networked applications based on Windows NT Server, while addressing the need for open access to the wide range of platforms prevalent within organizations today, including UNIX and SNA host environments. Windows DNA also addresses the need for organizations to deliver applications to multiple desktop computing platforms including Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 operating systems and Windows NT, Macintosh and UNIX. Visual Studio provides a complete suite of tools for addressing all elements of the Windows DNA framework, including the user interface, business logic and data services layers of a multitier solution. Through pervasive support for the Component Object Model (COM), components can be created, shared and reused by developers using any of the tools in Visual Studio, no matter what language they were created in.

Fortune 1,000 Companies Embrace Visual Studio for Enterprise Development

“Visual Studio gives developers an easy way to build applications that can be integrated with SAP R/3 business processes, business objects and application components,” said Frank Buchheit, director of technology services for SAP America Inc. “Visual Studio offers a flexible, proven development environment that complements the SAP Business Framework.”

The SAP Business Framework and its more than 400 business application programming interfaces (BAPIs) provide an open, standards-based architecture for integrating business components. The Visual Studio and the DCOM Component Connector, which is delivered by SAP, enable the use of SAP Business Objects and their BAPI methods in a DCOM environment.

“We used Visual Studio to build a client management application that is being deployed nationally to our 300 retail branches,” said Everette Johnson, application development manager for Smith Barney Corp. “The application required seamless access to our IBM mainframe-based information, as well as local, replicated Microsoft SQL Server
™
databases. With Visual Studio, we were able to implement specific elements of our distributed application based on the technical requirements and developer skill set and be assured that our other developers could easily integrate and reuse that component from any other language or tool in the suite.”

Working With Leading Enterprise Development Tool Vendors

An important component of Microsoft’s enterprise development strategy is its relationships with leading vendors in the enterprise development tools industry. In a separate development today, Microsoft announced eight new member companies in its Enterprise Development Tool Partners (EDP) program that will work closely with Microsoft on both technical and marketing efforts to support the development of mission-critical applications with Visual Studio. This cooperation with leading vendors in the key areas critical to enterprise development, including analysis, design and modeling, testing and quality assurance, configuration and process management, and legacy system connectivity, enables Microsoft to deliver integrated, best-of-breed solutions for enterprise development to its corporate customers. EDP provides a wide range of solution alternatives through compatible third-party products including service providers, tools and reusable component collections.

About Visual Studio 97

Microsoft Visual Studio 97 is a complete development tools suite for enterprise development. Visual Studio 97 provides corporations with easy-to-use tools for building business applications for the Windows NT Server platform, including client/server, multitier and Web-

based solutions. Visual Studio 97 Professional Edition features the Visual Basic® development system version 5.0, Visual C++® development system version 5.0, Visual J++
™
development system for Java version 1.1, Visual InterDev
™Web development system version 1.0 and Visual FoxPro® database development system version 5.0. Visual Studio 97 Enterprise Edition also includes enterprise and team development features such as the Microsoft Repository, the Visual SourceSafe
™
version control system, Visual Modeler, Visual Database Tools, Visual Component Manager and a development version of Microsoft SQL Server 6.5.

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.

Microsoft, Visual Studio, Windows NT, Windows, Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J++, Visual InterDev, Visual FoxPro and Visual SourceSafe are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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