SAN DIEGO, Sept. 14, 1999 — Shared Medical Systems Corp. (NYSE: SMS), the health industry’s network computing leader, and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq
“MSFT” ) announced today at the Windows On Healthcare V conference a joint cooperation agreement that will expedite a new generation of affordable, value-added information solutions for health care. As part of the agreement, the two companies will create and staff a development lab on the Microsoft campus to develop health information solutions utilizing the Microsoft® Windows® operating system and BackOffice® family of products.
The development lab will simulate a health-care operating environment to test product performance and verify compatibility, scalability, reliability and interoperability between SMS products and Microsoft products. The companies will test SMS solutions on Microsoft technology including Windows 2000 and Microsoft SQL Server TM 7.0 to benchmark performance in multiple situations, including a remote Application Services Provider (ASP) environment. Currently, SMS provides more than 30 applications based on Microsoft technology and continues to deploy more in an ASP delivery model. SMS is the leading ASP for health-care organizations, providing rapid deployment of applications, reduced costs and improved IT performance.
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“This joint development lab is a true milestone in the alliance between SMS and Microsoft,”
said David F. Perri, SMS senior vice president of technology and customer services.
“With SMS and Microsoft developers collaborating, we will be able to take information solutions for healthcare to unprecedented levels of performance and functionality. Working together, we will ensure that SMS solutions and Microsoft technologies are finely tuned to deliver value, manageability, reliability and functionality at lower costs.”
The two industry leaders formed a Healthcare Development Alliance in 1995, and are stepping up technology sharing and development cooperation today to better enable health-care organizations to take advantage of high-performance technology solutions that offer a lower cost of ownership. SMS and Microsoft are working together to define projects and will launch the lab with a focus on Active Directory TM directory service security, a feature of Microsoft Windows 2000. The Active Directory security feature will enable organizations to better define and manage the information users can access across a health organization.
“We are especially pleased to collaborate with SMS to open a Redmond Technology Development Center and continue supporting SMS’ deployment of mission-critical ASP health-care solutions and services based on the Microsoft Windows NT® Server operating system and BackOffice family of products,”
said Davide Vigano, director of health care and financial services at Microsoft.
“SMS operates the country’s largest data center serving health care and delivers more than 99.9 percent uptime. Its commitment to the Microsoft platform will provide customers with end-to-end health-care solutions that will reduce costs and facilitate their access to critical health-care data – enhancing customer satisfaction and value.”
“This level of cooperation between two industry leaders is a remarkable undertaking and one that will certainly benefit our customer health-care organizations,”
Perri said.
“We are pleased that Microsoft acknowledges our expertise in developing and delivering health information solutions and our 30-year history as a leading ASP. SMS is committed to expanding our ASP services and solutions based on Windows 2000 and the Microsoft BackOffice products because of their reliability, scalability and lower total cost of ownership.”
About SMS
SMS supplies information systems and professional services to over 5,000 health enterprises and health providers in North America, Europe and New Zealand. The company offers a full range of clinical, financial and management applications to support health providers across the continuum of care. In addition, SMS is a leading provider of outsourcing, consulting and implementation services.
Founded in 1969, SMS has 30 years of network computing experience, operating the industry’s largest Information Services Center (ISC) and Health Intranet for application processing, e-commerce, enterprise systems management, and managed Internet services. SMS’ ISC operates health applications for over 1,000 health providers with connections to over 300,000 customer workstations and processes nearly 50 million transactions a day. The SMS Health Intranet includes 2 million miles of private wide area network and connections to the Internet.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft 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, BackOffice, Active Directory and Windows NT 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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