SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 15, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that leading customer management independent software vendors (ISVs) have committed to supporting Microsoft® SQL Server
™
7.0 as their premier offering by taking advantage of its mobile components. The upcoming version of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is scheduled to include enhanced mobile computing features, ensuring that important enterprise data remains consistent and accessible to all users whether they are on business travel or in the corporate office.
Customer management ISVs, including Aurum Software Inc., GoldMine Software Corp., Moss Micro Inc., ONYX Software Corp., Pivotal Software Inc., SalesLogix Corp. and Siebel Systems Inc., are working closely with Microsoft to deliver best-of-breed mobile sales force automation (SFA) solutions based on the SQL Server 7.0 platform. ISVs and their customers will benefit from enhanced performance in SQL Server 7.0 and the new mobile computing feature set, which includes advanced merge replication for disconnected users and a standardized code base allowing ISVs to write one version of their application for both the desktop and the server.
“SQL Server 7.0 makes it easy for users of sales force automation solutions to provide meaningful information to their customers,”
said Holly Henson, group manager for ERP and customer management at Microsoft.
“This is possible because it allows field sales professionals to store the most current corporate data on their laptop with optimal performance.”
Microsoft has worked closely with ISVs to ensure that the mobile features of SQL Server 7.0 are utilized in SFA applications to provide the same quality business benefit to users who are working on the road as those who access the database in the corporate office.
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Microsoft Works With ISVs to Develop Best-of-Breed Mobile Solutions
The Microsoft SQL Server development team has brought customer management ISVs into its migration lab throughout the year. This has enabled the ISVs to migrate their applications to SQL Server 7.0 to ensure that the database works seamlessly with their mobile applications and to solicit their feedback on the features and functionality their customers need in a database management system.
Aurum Software
Aurum Software, the front-office systems division of The Baan Co., has developed AurumFrontOffice, a full customer management solution optimized to run inside the Microsoft Internet Explorer environment and on top of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0. The AurumFrontOffice suite contains AurumSales, a module designed for use in both inside and field sales organizations. AurumSales offers unique features that use the power and scalability of the SQL Server capabilities to access crucial sales data.
“Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is a foundation technology that optimizes the performance of AurumFrontOffice, for both field and mobile salespeople,”
said Mary Coleman, CEO of Aurum Software.
“Companies adopting AurumFrontOffice need to be able to scale to thousands of concurrent users, and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 offers reliable, full scalability. SQL Server 7.0 also offers robust functionality at an extremely competitive price point, thereby lowering our customers’ total cost of ownership for their customer management solution.”
Pivotal Software
Pivotal Software is currently tuning and optimizing its customer relationship management application, Pivotal Relationship 98, to take full advantage of the rich mobile features offered by SQL Server 7.0.
“As winner of the Microsoft Industry Solution Award for ‘Best Mobile Sales Solution’ in 1997 and with over 11,000 mobile users already licensed, Pivotal is a proven expert in mobile computing,”
said Norm Francis, president and CEO of Pivotal Software.
“Our engineers are extremely impressed with the new mobile capabilities in Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, especially SQL Server Desktop, which gives us a vital platform for streamlining data synchronization and enhancing performance for our large base of mobile users. Bottom line wins are huge for Pivotal Relationship 98 users: dramatically faster access to critical information for people on the road, and higher-quality information as a result of seamless integration between mobile, satellite and centralized databases.”
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is the best relational database choice for field sales representatives because it has been designed specifically to address their mobile computing requirements. SQL Server 7.0 will deliver the following:
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SQL Server Desktop. The desktop version allows users to take their data and applications with them out of the office and automatically synchronize the data with the home office. Because SQL Server Desktop is built on the same code base as SQL Server and SQL Server Enterprise Edition, it provides mobile users with 100 percent application compatibility from their laptop to an SMP cluster.
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Advanced merge replication with conflict resolution. Mobile and remote users can make changes to data offline, and the changes will be synchronized automatically when users connect to the network or the Internet or dial up the home office. SQL Server 7.0 also includes enhancements for Internet replication.
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Integration with Microsoft Office 2000. This integration will allow users to utilize familiar tools such as Microsoft Excel to access their data. For example, Excel can be used to analyze and chart customer sales activities from an SFA application.
Created by a world-class development team, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is a leading Windows NT® operating system-based database, bringing business advantage and improved decision-making to all levels of an organization through the power of data warehousing, industry solutions and interoperability with Microsoft Office. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 enables independent software vendors and customers to build and deploy scalable database solutions for electronic commerce, line-of-business solutions, mobile computing and data warehousing. Microsoft SQL Server is also a component of Microsoft BackOffice® Server, a comprehensive, integrated server that makes it easy to build, manage and deploy powerful business solutions.
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is scheduled to be available in the fourth quarter of 1998. For more information on SQL Server 7.0, please see http://www.microsoft.com/backoffice/sql/ .
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