Microsoft Highlights Growing Developer Momentum For Windows NT 5.0

DENVER, Oct. 12, 1998 — Momentum for the Microsoft® Windows NT® 5.0 operating system continues to grow among developers this week at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference.

New services found in the Windows NT 5.0 beta 2 software in areas such as directory, security and message queuing, as well as component services in the form of COM+, are leading developers to enhance their applications to take advantage of these new features.

Speaking at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates told an audience of over 6,000 developers, “The day Windows NT 5.0 ships, there will be more than 60,000 commercially available applications supporting it. Furthermore, there will be three times as many Windows NT 5.0-specific applications than there were Windows® 95-specific applications when that operating system launched. This kind of application support is unprecedented. In its first 18 months of availability, we predict the number of applications supporting Windows NT will grow to over 100,000.” This represents the largest base of applications available for any operating system at shipment, by any company, and offers customers unprecedented choice and flexibility.

Windows NT 5.0 beta 2 has been distributed to more than 250,000 IT professionals worldwide. Developers have already begun using this prerelease software to enhance their applications. For example, features in Windows NT 5.0 such as Active Directory and the Windows Installer Service will provide added benefits in lowering the cost of deploying and managing applications. Additional services, such as COM+, make it easier to build distributed
N-tier applications.

Setting the Stage for Windows NT 5.0

Companies such as InstallShield Software Corp. and FileNet Corp. are working today to deliver enhanced versions of their products that will take advantage of the new services provided in Windows NT 5.0.

“We are very excited about Windows NT 5.0 and the benefits it will provide for our customers. InstallShield is focused on providing tools and services that reduce the total cost of deploying and managing software by fully utilizing the Windows NT 5.0 Windows installer technology,” said Viresh Bhatia, CEO and founder of InstallShield. “To jump-start this initiative, we are kicking off our Early Experience Program to help developers for Windows NT 5.0 use our InstallShield for Windows installer tool and be the first to create these innovative installations.”

“We see Windows NT 5.0 as a compelling opportunity to build a different class of integrated document management (IDM) products,” said Bruce Waddington, senior vice president, engineering, FileNET Corp. “The advanced application services in Windows NT 5.0 enable us to build powerful, yet easily manageable, document management solutions for our enterprise customers. We are using the Windows NT 5.0 Active Directory Services to provide a single point of administration for user views, Security Services for single login, Directory Services for application publishing, and Transaction Services for load balancing and large-scale transaction support. The benefit is that we can ensure excellent performance and manageability for our Windows NT customers.”

By integrating their applications now with services such as Active Directory, developers can build applications that deliver greater functionality and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) to their users when Windows NT 5.0 ships.

Windows NT 5.0 Makes Distributed Computing Easier

The Windows NT 5.0 operating system will provide better support for distributed applications by integrating COM+ technology into the operating system. COM+ extends and enhances the current component services found in Windows NT 4.0. Some of the services provided by COM+ include the following:

Publish and Subscribe Event Service. This provides a general event mechanism that allows multiple clients to “subscribe” to various “published” events. When the publisher fires an event, the COM+ event system iterates through the subscription database and notifies all subscribers.
In-Memory Database (IMDB), with support for transactions. The IMDB provides an application with fast access to data, without incurring the overhead associated with storing and accessing durable state to and from physical disk.
Queued Components. This allows clients to invoke methods on COM components using an asynchronous model. Such a model is particularly useful on unreliable networks and in disconnected usage scenarios.
Dynamic Load Balancing. This automatically spreads client requests across multiple equivalent COM components.
Object Pooling. This provides an application with a fast and efficient method of reusing COM objects, improving application performance.

As a server for distributed applications, Windows NT Server 5.0 provides the services needed to easily build enterprise and Web-based Windows Distributed interNet Applications (Windows DNA). This builds on the existing services found in Windows NT 4.0, which are widely used by customers today. A recent Forrester Research Inc. report points out that 46 percent of the Fortune 1,000 companies they surveyed use Microsoft Transaction Server in Windows NT 4.0, the foundation of COM+, as their application server today. In addition, the report also points out that Forrester thinks 70 percent of the Fortune 1,000 will embrace COM (the Microsoft Component Object Model) as their dominant platform for building new strategic business applications.

Companies running their applications on the Windows NT 5.0 beta 2 code, such as Avio Corp., are excited about the new COM+ component services in Windows NT 5.0.

“With Windows NT 5.0 and COM+, Microsoft offers the best integrated platform for building distributed applications in the marketplace,” said Ron Wunder, vice president of research and development for Avio Corp., provider of information technology for physicians organizations. “Windows NT 5.0 as an application server, with its advanced set of component services, provides us with the richest development platform available today. We have been using the beta code and it has worked very well.”

Additional information about Windows NT 5.0 can be viewed at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ ; learn more about COM+ at http://www.microsoft.com/com/default.asp .

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, Windows NT and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

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The following is a list of companies who are creating some of the 60,000 commercially available applications expected when Windows NT 5.0 ships:

acotec GmbH-Advanced Communication Technologies, http://www.acotec.de

American Power Conversion, http://www.apcc.com/

Artisoft Inc., http://www.artisoft.com

Atalla Security Products, a Compaq company, http://www.atalla.com/

Attachmate Corp., http://www.attachmate.com/

AVT, http://www.avtc.com/

AXENT Technologies Inc., http://www.axent.com/

BEA Systems, http://www.beasys.com/

BindView Development Corp., http://www.bindview.com/

BMC Software Inc., http://www.bmc.com/

Boole & Babbage Inc., http://www.boole.com/