Financial Services Industry Leaders Embrace Microsoft Windows 2000

NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 1999 — Today at the Financial Technology Expo, Microsoft Corp. showcased customer and industry support for the forthcoming Microsoft® Windows® 2000 operating system, including plans for migration by financial services companies. The company also announced new services from Compaq Computer Corp. that will assist financial services companies in migrating to this new platform.

Windows 2000 will address key industry challenges by providing customers with an easy way to Internet-enable their business using integrated Web application services, increased scalability and industry-standard security.

“The financial services industry has always invested in the world’s leading technologies to give them the edge they need to compete,”
said Bill Hartnett, director of financial services for Microsoft.
“Windows 2000 is the platform that is enabling a whole new generation of solutions, from e-commerce to knowledge management. The support we are hearing from leaders like Compaq, Reuters Group PLC and Software Dynamics Incorporated (SDI) is an important indication that Windows 2000 is addressing business challenges in the financial services industry.”

Financial Services Customers and Vendors Experience Benefits of Windows 2000

Reuters, the world’s leading provider of news and real-time financial data, announced that it will offer compatibility with Windows 2000 on its most popular products by the time the operating system is released.

“Reuters’ customers in financial services are demanding richer information at all hours of the day with zero tolerance for failure,”
said Mike Sayers, Reuters chief technology officer.
“We believe that our open desktop products running on Windows 2000 will provide that.”

Reuters’ announcement that 3000Xtra and PowerPlus Pro would be ported to Windows 2000 is an important indicator of the broad anticipation for Windows 2000 in the financial services independent software vendor (ISV) community. Reuters has been one of the participants in Microsoft’s early adopter program and plans to deploy Windows 2000 internally, forecasting that it will have more than 1,000 workstations deployed on Windows 2000 by the time the product is released to manufacturing.

SDI specializes in the development and implementation of branch automation, call center, customer service and enterprisewide delivery systems for the banking industry. Financial services organization throughout the world use SDI solutions.

“We are excited about the upcoming introduction of Windows 2000. It provides SDI and our customers with a robust and effective operating environment for the new millennium,”
said Tom Shen, president, SDI.
“It delivers a scalable platform on which we can run the entire ZEUS family of products, from a single client workstation to a multiuser, multichannel server, and from our telephony server to our ZEUS CRM Enterprise Server. We are in the process of qualifying all SDI software for Windows 2000.”

New Services From Compaq and Microsoft

Compaq and Microsoft have created four new packaged service offerings to assist financial services customers in building powerful applications. The offerings will help financial services developers design, test and deploy applications under Windows 2000. These services include the following:

  • Windows DNA for Financial Services (Windows DNAfs) lab. A five-day workshop for developers to learn about Windows DNAfs and actually create a key application under the Windows DNAfs framework.

  • Architecture review. A strategic-level
    “whiteboard discussion”
    with Microsoft Consulting Services and Compaq consultants to discuss an organization’s current development environment and challenges. The results of the review include recommendations on how Windows DNAfs and Windows 2000-based technologies can most effectively be implemented in the organization.

  • Windows 2000 Design and Deployment Workshop. A five-day workshop that details how to build applications to take advantage of the Windows 2000 development infrastructure, including COM+.

  • Windows 2000 Scalability Testing. A five-day workshop focused on testing large, mission-critical financial services applications, including tests for scalability and performance.

“Financial services customers have asked for enhanced support services to help them adopt new technologies like Windows 2000 into their systems and solutions,”
said Robert Zitofsky, regional practice manager at Compaq.
“As the only worldwide prime integrator for Microsoft and the provider who has helped the most early adopters of Windows 2000, we are pleased to offer these services. Our 3,000 certified service delivery professionals and 15,000 Microsoft-trained specialists stand ready to help global companies succeed with Windows 2000 wherever they need to do so. Compaq has long been an intensive user of Microsoft products and by launch date expects to have 20,000 internal users running day-to-day business on the Windows 2000 platform because of its scalability, reliability and enterprise support capabilities.”

About Windows 2000

Windows 2000 Professional and the Windows 2000 Server products lower the total cost of ownership and provide a rich digital infrastructure for organizations of all sizes. In-depth technical and deployment planning information on Windows 2000 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ .

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“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.

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