REDMOND, Wash., and WESTBORO, Mass., July 21, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. and Data General Corp. today announced they will work together to promote health-care enterprise solutions using Microsoft® ActiveX® for Healthcare. As part of the relationship, Microsoft and Data General plan to establish a network of Healthcare Competency Centers to foster the development of ActiveX for Healthcare-compliant applications and to offer a broad range of fixed-price health-care service and support solutions. These two offerings will help facilitate the development of ActiveX for Healthcare-compliant solutions for independent software vendors (ISVs) and will help health-care organizations implement fully integrated solutions.
One of the biggest issues facing health-care organizations is the need to create integrated systems using applications from completely different software companies. As the health-care industry continues to consolidate through mergers and acquisitions, CIOs must integrate disparate systems within diverse facilities of newly formed enterprises. ActiveX for Healthcare-compliant solutions, which use Microsoft technologies based on COM, the Microsoft Component Object Model, are designed to enable true Plug-and-Play interoperability so that health-care organizations can select best-of-breed components from any source, without the risk or limitations of relying on a single vendor. ActiveX for Healthcare takes advantage of a health-care organization’s current investment in technology while enabling powerful new solutions.
“We are pleased to establish this alliance with Data General to deliver the benefits of ActiveX for Healthcare to health-care organizations worldwide,”
said Steve Ballmer, executive vice president of sales and support at Microsoft.
“Customers and developers will benefit from the combination of Microsoft’s strength in health care and technology and Data General’s expertise in deploying, managing and supporting high-availability systems based on the Microsoft BackOffice® family.”
“In conjunction with the ActiveX for Healthcare technology, Microsoft and Data General are delivering the enabling technology that will support a truly integrated health-care information system,”
said Michael Worhach, vice president of Data General’s health-care division.
“Health-care providers now will have the technology support that will allow them to focus on their primary mission, delivering the best medical care for their patients.”
The Healthcare Competency Center, scheduled to open in September 1998 at Data General’s facilities in the Boston area, will allow health-care software developers to develop, test and demonstrate ActiveX-compliant health-care applications running on Data General’s family of enterprise AviiON® servers running the Microsoft Windows NT® operating system and BackOffice platform.
“This relationship will empower developers to reduce costs, respond more quickly to changing customer needs, and count on maximum uptime from their ActiveX for Healthcare installations,”
said John D. Carpenter Jr., worldwide health-care industry manager at Microsoft.
“Disparate systems are a major issue in the health-care industry. ActiveX for Healthcare is a powerful, enterprise object technology designed to achieve interoperability so customers can take advantage of COM and Windows NT Server while maintaining their investments in existing applications and systems.”
Also as part of the relationship, Microsoft and Data General, which is a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider, plan to offer a broad range of fixed-price health-care service and support solutions tailored to meet the current and future high-end enterprise computing requirements of health-care customers. The fixed-price solutions will range from start-up Windows NT-based services to more sophisticated Microsoft Cluster Server and Microsoft Exchange services. Solutions include training, on-site technical evaluations and reviews, guaranteed server uptime, and full seven-by-24 support.
“Our health-care customers constantly remind us that we must take risk and cost out of their daily operations,”
Worhach said.
“Today’s integrated delivery systems require integrated applications to support the entire continuum of health care. ActiveX for Healthcare enables this to happen.”
Health-Care Expertise
This announcement marks another milestone in a growing enterprise relationship between Microsoft and Data General. In the past three years, Data General has become a major player in the enterprise segment, with Windows NT as the fastest area of growth for its AViiON server division.
“For the past 25 years, Data General has been a leader in providing high-technology enterprise solutions to the health-care industry, with our servers and storage solutions currently in use at more than 1,200 hospitals worldwide. This relationship further strengthens our ability to deliver advanced health-care enterprise solutions to the health-care industry,”
said Ethan Allen, vice president of Data General’s AviiON server division.
Health-Care Success Stories
This effort expands an existing health-care relationship between Data General and Microsoft. As part of this expansion, the companies are participating in the
“Vital Measure”
program along with software developers System Techniques Inc. The
“Vital Measures”
program is designed to reduce the time and cost associated with designing and implementing health-care data warehouses by providing a standard set of modules that can be expanded as the need for data grows.
About ActiveX for Healthcare
ActiveX for Healthcare is based on COM, the Microsoft Component Object Model, to enable Plug-and-Play interoperability between health-care applications. With ActiveX for Healthcare, health-care organizations will be able to integrate patient information, as well as data from various departments such as radiology and pharmacy, regardless of the software applications being used. ActiveX for Healthcare is designed to offer a true Plug-and-Play environment that allows health-care organizations to select best-of-breed components from any source, without the cost, risk or limitations of reliance on a single supplier.
About Healthcare Competency Centers
The first of the Healthcare Competency Centers is scheduled to open in September 1998. Software engineers from both companies will be available at the center to work closely with software vendors to address the integration needs of the health-care enterprise. Vendors will be able to demonstrate the interoperability of a variety of enterprise applications to health-care customers. The centers will help assure health-care customers of the interoperability between disparate systems, by giving them the opportunity to see the Plug-and-Play capability of their current system and new applications before they make a buying decision. For more information about the competency centers, visit Data General’s alliance Web page at http://www.dg.com/healthcarealliance/ .
Software developers specializing in health care will be able to demonstrate their applications on Data General devices running Microsoft Windows® CE and Windows NT Server, Terminal Server Edition, and Data General’s family of AViiON enterprise servers, including the company’s unique
“In-a-Box”
single rack-mounted configurations.
“In-a-Box” configurations include TermServer-in-a-Box™ running Microsoft Windows NT Server, Terminal Server Edition, Cluster-in-a-Box™ based on Windows NT and running Microsoft Cluster Server and Exchange-in-a-Box™ running Microsoft Exchange software.
Baptist Memphis Hospital
“ActiveX appears to have substantial value to an integrated delivery system such as Baptist Memphis, where we require an integrated information system to support our organization,”
said Dick Escue, chief information officer for Baptist Memphis Hospital.
“Achieving Plug-and-Play interoperability at the application level with diverse applications across our enterprise is a highly desirable goal. We see ActiveX as a means to accomplish our integration goal for the enterprise. Having been a long-term partner with Data General, we look forward to working with them and Microsoft in establishing an environment to test application interoperability as well as scalability.”
HBOC
“HBOC has been a long-term partner of Data General and we are looking forward to utilizing the Healthcare Competency Centers for multiple purposes such as scalability testing, clustering testing and application testing on Terminal Server,”
said Rusty Lewis, HBOC chief technology officer.
IDX Systems Corp.
“IDX is excited about the opportunity to participate with Data General and Microsoft to implement, test and promote the use of ActiveX in health-care software solutions,”
said Jeff Sutherland, senior vice president, engineering and product development for IDX Corp.
”
Interoperability is critical in today’s expanding and mixed platform health-care enterprise. ActiveX for Healthcare messaging components play a key role in enterprise connectivity. The Microsoft and Data General Competency Centers will provide a great opportunity for hands-on collaboration between engineers from IDX, Data General and Microsoft to validate the interoperability, functionality and performance of ActiveX. In addition, Data General and IDX have established a cooperative relationship as evidenced in our joint presentation at HIMSS ’98 Scalability. Together, we demonstrated the scalability of IDXtendR, running on Microsoft SQL Server
™and Windows NT and Data General’s AviiON server platform with excellent results.”
About Data General
Data General’s Atlanta-area customer support center is certified as both a Microsoft Authorized Support Center and a Microsoft Technical Education Center, and its Westboro location is also a certified Technical Education Center.
Data General (NYSE
“DGN”
), based in Westboro, Mass., specializes in servers, storage systems, and related software and services for customers worldwide. The company reported revenues of $1.5 billion during fiscal 1997. Additional information on the company, its products and services is available on the Internet at http://www.dg.com/healthcare/ .
About Microsoft
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, ActiveX, BackOffice, Windows NT and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
AViiON is a registered trademark and TermServer-in-a-Box, Cluster-in-a-Box and Exchange-in-a-Box are trademarks of Data General Corp.
Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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