Microsoft Announces Groundswell of Support for .NET Platform

ORLANDO, Fla., July 11, 2000 — Today at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2000, Microsoft Corp. introduced the Microsoft® .NET Framework and Visual Studio® .NET and announced that over 100 industry partners are supporting the .NET Framework, including 70 independent software vendors (ISVs), 17 tools vendors, ten systems integrators and solutions providers, and four publishers. In addition, more than 90 partners are showcasing their support by exhibiting at the event.

Through Microsoft’s developer conferences and training events, such as this week’s PDC, Microsoft educates over a million professional developers a year.

“We are very excited to see commitment from such a wide variety of industry partners in building to the .NET platform,”
said Chris Atkinson, vice president of marketing for the Developer Division at Microsoft.
“Extensive industry support will ensure developers have a great experience.”

The .NET Framework is open and designed for any programming language, and Microsoft has been working with tools vendors to ensure that developers are successful in targeting the .NET Platform with their current languages and skills. Languages supported include the following:

  • COBOL, Fujitsu Software Corp.

  • Eiffel, Interactive Software Engineering

  • Haskell Utrecht Univ/Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology

  • Mercury, University of Melbourne

  • ML, Microsoft Research

  • Oberon, ETH Zentrum

  • Perl and Python, ActiveState

  • Profiling Tools, NuMega Lab-Compuware Corp.

  • SmallTalk, QKS

  • Rational

  • Scheme, Norwestern University

Independent software vendors announcing support for the .NET Platform include the following:

  • APEX

  • Bunka Orient Corp.

  • Centura Software Corp.

  • ComponentSource

  • FarPoint Technologies

  • GreatPlains

  • InterAccess Co.

  • InVerge

  • LEAD Technologies Inc.

  • Seagate Software

  • Sheridan Software Systems Inc.

  • Software Artisans

  • Stingray Software

  • VideoSoft

  • WebGecko Software

  • WindwardStar

To ensure customers get assistance building their own .NET Framework-based applications and Web services, Microsoft has been working closely with systems integrators and solution providers, including BSQUARE Corp., marchFIRST Inc., Razorfish, VenturCom Inc. and ZEFER.

The availability of high-quality books is critical to ensuring that developers can quickly get up to speed with the .NET Framework. Microsoft has been working with many publishers to ensure that books covering the critical aspects of the .NET Framework are available. These publishers include Macmillan USA, McGraw-Hill, O’Reilly & Associates, Sams Publishing and Wrox Press LTD.

About Microsoft .NET

The Microsoft .NET Platform, announced June 22 at Forum 2000, is Microsoft’s initiative for creating the next generation of software, which melds computing and communications in a revolutionary way. This vision offers developers, businesses and consumers the ability to harness technology on their terms and with the tools they need to create truly distributed Web Services making information available any time, any place and on any device.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies 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.

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

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages.

Quote Sheet Addendum:

Dick Hardt

CEO
ActiveState

“The Microsoft .NET Framework removes the technical barriers of true cross-language development, enabling Perl and Python programmers to leverage components built with other languages and vice versa. This allows programmers to use the language they’re most familiar with and that’s best suited for the task.”

Sunny Wong
Chairman
APEX

“Developers around the world are looking for ways to increase productivity and develop rich Internet user experiences. The Microsoft .NET Framework can increase developers’ productivity because it’s simple to program, is multilanguage compatible, and increases application reliability. The Microsoft .NET Framework also makes it easy to create and use Web applications and services because it has integrated SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol] support. This means that applications can communicate with other applications instead of having Web browsers connecting to servers and retrieving HTML pages. The result is that the Microsoft .NET Framework will make it easier for developers to create distributed, Internet-scale applications using their existing knowledge and tools.”

Joe Falcone

Chief Technical Officer
Centura Software Corp.

“Centura is already building on the capabilities of Windows® 2000 and the Microsoft .NET Framework to provide our customers with a comprehensive development solution for Web and wireless e-business applications. The Microsoft .NET Framework provides Centura with a foundation to add unprecedented openness, power and reliability to our development solution. The integrated support for XML and SOAP in the Microsoft .NET Framework couldn’t come at a better time.”

Sam Patterson

CEO
ComponentSource


The Microsoft .NET Framework advances the concepts Microsoft first introduced in COM by coupling the infrastructure and services necessary for a Web application environment. Developers can more easily build and reuse components, resulting in huge productivity gains. The Microsoft .NET Framework and C# are good news for the open market that we represent. It is a supply- and choice-driven market, and the demand for server-side, off-the-shelf components, which could potentially become Web services, is huge. This announcement will help strengthen our efforts to increase the supply of componentized business expertise to our corporate customer base in more than
100 countries.”

Doug Turner

Vice President of Product Management
Compuware Corp.

“The Microsoft .NET framework is a powerful and robust platform for developing Web and Internet applications.”

Richard Williamson

CEO
FarPoint Technologies

“We are extremely excited about the release of ASP+ and C#. This technology will help our customers as they go about building business Internet applications. It will simplify their server-side development work and enable them to provide a rich client-side experience for their customers. For us as control vendors, it enables us to build powerful next-generation server-side components that can stand alone or work with existing client-side components.”

Basim Kadhim

Chief Architect, COBOL Product Group
Fujitsu Software Corp.

“Understanding the benefits of the Microsoft .NET Framework for COBOL programmers begins with appreciating the value of the Microsoft .NET Framework’s common language runtime. The runtime is a unifying architecture that provides the building blocks for language interoperability, security and robustness. As Microsoft takes its .NET Framework to other devices, such as Windows CE-powered devices, Fujitsu COBOL will be there as a first class language.”

Darren Laybourn

Executive Vice President of Products and Services
Great Plains

“The Microsoft .NET framework delivers cutting-edge technology with increased productivity, reliability, multilanguage support and Internet capabilities. It will have a profound impact on both Web-deployable solutions and the transformation of business processes to the Internet.”

Hoyt Hudson
Executive Vice President of Research and Development
InterAccess Co.

“The Microsoft .NET Framework radically reduces the amount of system administration required to maintain our Web Platinum hosting solution, while at the same time improving our customers’ experience. Not only can customers now install their own software components directly onto our servers via simple FTP, the Microsoft .NET Framework also carefully monitors all components to avoid errors. Reducing costs and improving service is a win-win for InterAccess and its customers.”

Dr. Bertrand Meyer

President
Interactive Software Engineering (ISE)

“The advent of the Microsoft .NET Framework provides the first truly multilanguage platform, where components written in different languages can interoperate at almost no extra work. Eiffel on the Microsoft .NET Framework and the common language runtime takes this interoperability to new levels. Eiffel is the ideal vehicle on the Microsoft .NET Framework, for both producing components and integrating components from other languages.”

Michael Anderson
President
InVerge

“We are delighted with the Microsoft .NET Framework Active Server Pages+ because it enables us to quickly add new capabilities that provide a better user experience. The increased performance and reliability of ASP+ will allow us to address more customers without having to buy more hardware.”

Andreas Freeman

Manager of Developer Support
LEAD Technologies Inc.

“Active Server Pages+ technology enables developers to focus on writing their business logic, rather than writing ‘plumbing’ code, while increasing reliability. LEADTOOLS allows developers to add simple to advanced imaging technology in much the same manner, quickly and easily. Simpler is better, and we believe that ASP+’s control development environment makes good business sense.”

Edward Szofer

Chief Development Officer
marchFIRST Inc.

“The Microsoft .NET Framework is a robust platform that marchFIRST can leverage to build and deploy scalable, reliable, easy-to-use Web applications for our clients. With the Microsoft .NET Framework as the foundation, we are able to help our clients rapidly develop new capabilities and take them to market quickly, which is critical in the Internet economy.”

Tim O’Reilly

Founder and CEO
O’Reilly & Associates

“We think the Microsoft .NET Framework is cool technology and we are looking forward to helping experienced Microsoft developers get up to speed quickly. We are especially excited by the new Microsoft .NET Framework and SOAP support for building Web applications and services that can interoperate with other commercial and open source platforms.”

David Simmons
Chief Technology Officer
QKS

“The Microsoft .NET Framework is a milestone of industry innovation for enabling high-performance cross-language interoperability and integrity. By providing a core VM Runtime architecture that is language-neutral with rich services for code security and validation, Microsoft has made a great contribution in the evolution of software tools and integration technology.”

Jackson Brandenburg
Solutions Architect
Razorfish

“Razorfish is very enthusiastic about the next generation of Microsoft Web development technologies. We anticipate that the Microsoft .NET Framework will help us enhance productivity and system reliability, allowing Razorfish to continue delivering intentional user experiences to our clients.”

Bradley Jones

Associate Publisher
Sams Publishing

“C# has been one of the best kept secrets in the last couple of years. With C# and the Microsoft .NET platform, Microsoft is once again taking current concepts and technologies and innovating them to the next level. While C# is not necessary for Microsoft’s next generation of Web and Windows® -based applications and services, many developers are going to find it a great language to use.”

Robert H. Wolf

President and CEO
Sheridan Software Systems Inc.

“As a leading publisher of developer tools and components, we are extremely excited about the Microsoft .NET Framework. It will allow programmers to develop Web-based applications easily, reduce the time spent writing plumbing code, and allow them to concentrate on the business logic unique to each application.”

David Wihl
President
Software Artisans


The Microsoft .NET vision will give developers an unprecedented range of options in how they utilize their development resources. Like ASP Studio, the XML-based Microsoft .NET platform will increase programmer productivity, streamline the development process and ensure robust, scalable Web applications.”

Gustavo Eydelsteyn
President and Founder
VideoSoft

“We’re especially pleased with the new Microsoft .NET platform because it enhances our ability to reach programmers of Web applications and Web services. We reach a lot of developers now, but the multilanguage and integrated Web services support in the Microsoft .NET Framework will greatly expand the range of developers we can work with. This new technology will let them focus on writing their business logic instead of writing plumbing code. The Microsoft .NET Framework has our technical people and me very excited.”

John Crim
CTO
WebGecko Software

“We are very excited about the Microsoft .NET Framework. We really like the programming model because it offers a friendlier, more productive environment for COM programming than C++, but retains the power and familiar syntax of C++. With Active Server Pages+, Web page development becomes object-oriented, with all the corresponding benefits: reuse, complexity hiding and modularity. Web pages are compiled, and method calls are early bound, so dynamic Web page performance is significantly improved.”

Katherine Gaudette
President
WindwardStar

“The Microsoft .NET Framework and ASP+ enable us to rapidly build customizable business services that can be easily integrated into our customers’ business processes, our service partners’ transaction flows and our solution providers’ value-added offerings. It provides an ideal platform for a fast-moving Internet company like WindwardStar.”

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