REDMOND, Wash., and PHOENIX, Oct. 13, 1999 — Microsoft Corp. and InfoImage Inc., a leading digital dashboard solutions provider, today announced a strategic alliance to meet the growing demand among enterprise customers for
“digital dashboard”
solutions that make it easy for knowledge workers to find, access, share and analyze the information they need to be effective in their jobs.
Digital dashboards help people work more efficiently by consolidating key information from disparate data sources, including corporate databases, enterprise resource planning systems, personal mail and calendaring, and the Internet, into a unified desktop view.
Under the alliance, InfoImage and Microsoft will deliver enterprise digital dashboard solutions using InfoImage’s freedom corporate portal and the Microsoft® knowledge management platform, which includes Office 2000 desktop productivity software and the forthcoming Windows® 2000 Server network operating system, Exchange 2000 Server client-server messaging and groupware, and Commerce Server. To help customers implement reliable, scalable and manageable digital dashboards, InfoImage will provide extensive consulting, systems integration and support services in addition to aggressively increasing its services capability for Microsoft-based solutions.
“Our alliance with Microsoft gives InfoImage an audience with the largest corporations in the world to help them improve the velocity at which they make business decisions,”
said Randy Eckel, president and CEO of InfoImage.
“The Microsoft platform will allow more users to enjoy the benefits of the freedom corporate portal. Microsoft shares our vision of a world in which technologies, systems and processes serve people and not the other way around.”
“This relationship is significant in two fundamental ways,”
said Jeff Raikes, group vice president of Worldwide Sales and Support at Microsoft.
“First, Microsoft and InfoImage will answer the growing need among large organizations for a way to connect knowledge workers to critical information and to each other. InfoImage’s corporate portal software exemplifies Microsoft’s vision of a digital dashboard based on Office 2000, Exchange Server and other core Microsoft products. Second, by increasing the breadth and depth of its consulting and support services, InfoImage will help customers rapidly reap the business benefits to be gained from Microsoft-based digital dashboard solutions.”
Alliance Components
Under the alliance, InfoImage and Microsoft will collaborate across technology, marketing, sales and services initiatives:
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InfoImage will train and certify 150 field-based engineers as Microsoft Certified System Engineers (MCSE) and Microsoft Certified Solution Developers (MCSD), and expand its services capacity focused on Microsoft-based digital dashboard solutions.
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Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) will provide knowledge transfer and architectural design expertise to InfoImage and work side-by-side with InfoImage engineers to develop technology consulting blueprints and service guides based on experience.
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InfoImage and Microsoft will pursue joint marketing and field sales initiatives for digital dashboard solutions.
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InfoImage will continue to aggressively pursue the development and enhancement of freedom on Microsoft’s enterprise platform.
About InfoImage freedom
The InfoImage freedom corporate portal reduces information overload and lets people focus on using information, collaborating with peers and generating knowledge for competitive advantage. InfoImage freedom provides a personalized, integrated view to both structured and unstructured data and allows knowledge workers to act upon the data for better, faster decision-making. The solution can be implemented across an enterprise or customized to provide line-of-business solutions such as sales, supply-chain, value-chain or executive portals.
“For many of Microsoft’s most strategic customers, the digital dashboard has been a promising vision of the future of integrated information technology. This vision has now been crystallized around InfoImage’s freedom corporate portal,”
said Gerry Murray, an analyst for Framingham, Mass.-based International Data Corp., an industry research firm.
“InfoImage is making a strategic move to ensure that its technology is customer-driven and reflects industry realities.”
“Corporations looking for security in their decisions about purchasing corporate portal technology should look at today’s announcement as an indication that InfoImage will be able to provide long-term business solutions to get the right information to the right people at the right time,”
said Steve Weissman, president of Kinetic Information, a Waltham, Mass.-based technology consultancy.
About InfoImage
InfoImage develops and implements corporate portal solutions that give people the freedom to make better, faster business decisions. InfoImage’s customizable corporate portal solution, freedom, enables people to view and manipulate both corporate and external information from their personal Web browsers, improving individual job performance and enhancing corporate knowledge management. Phoenix, Ariz.-based InfoImage was founded in 1992 and can be found at http://www.infoimage.com/ .
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.
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Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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