Customers Choose Microsoft for Business Agility

LAS VEGAS, Nov. 13, 2000 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that a host of companies — including several Oracle and Sun customers — have switched to a Microsoft® solution. Through the Microsoft .NET vision, Microsoft provides customers with an unparalleled solution that both offers industry-leading scalability and reliability, and goes a step further to offer business
“agility” the fastest time to market, the flexibility to integrate all their IT assets seamlessly and scale their infrastructure as it grows, and tools and devices that will empower their work force with information any time and any place. Microsoft also invited customers that are currently using or evaluating competitive technologies from Oracle or Sun to choose Microsoft and get the best enterprise performance solution at the best value in the industry.

“Every day Microsoft gains new business from the competition because customers recognize our innovation, commitment, and certainly they recognize value,”
said Chris Atkinson, vice president of the .NET Developer Solutions Group at Microsoft.
“No competitor in the marketplace is making investments in the digital economy like Microsoft is with .NET — and our customers are delivering these solutions today.”

Microsoft announced that four new customers have joined the ever-growing list of companies that either switched from Oracle or Sun to Microsoft or evaluated all of the platforms and chose Microsoft: GoldPocket, the first company to enable millions of people to participate simultaneously in real-time interactive events on a single Web site; OpenTable.com, the leading provider of online restaurant reservations and other services to the hospitality industry; Rivio Inc., a leading provider of online services for emerging businesses; and WorldStreet Corp., an e-business service provider focused on the institutional securities industry.

Additional companies, from startups to enterprises, that recently have begun to take advantage of the Microsoft platform and the .NET Enterprise Servers include ASB Bank Limited, CertifiedMail.com, Credit Suisse First Boston, Dell.com, eFANshop, FreeMarkets, GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., GoInvest.com, Guinness World Records Ltd., Haystack Toys, Henry Schein Inc., HeyAnita.com, Home Shopping Network, Insurance.com, Lycos Inc., Middlewire, RadioShack.com, Shared Greetings, SkilledNursing.com, United Network for Organ Sharing and Wachovia Bank N.A.

“We switched to the Microsoft platform because we needed to preserve and maximize our agility, that is, our ability to integrate new and emerging technologies,”
said Stephen Nelson, CEO of GuinnessWorldRecords.com.
“Using the integrated Microsoft platform has several advantages over using products from several different vendors, a key one being that new technologies are implemented in a consistent manner across all platform components. This consistency provides great flexibility and time-to-market benefits when integrating new features, regardless of whether they are provided by Microsoft, purchased from a third party or developed internally.”

“We decided to switch from a UNIX-based solution to the Microsoft platform because of its extensibility,”
said Bob Lamoureux, chief technology officer of WorldStreet Corp.
“It enabled us to easily develop a distributed solution, one that uses the Microsoft platforms already being used by our customers, and to do so in a manner that enables a completely integrated, extensible and customizable solution for our clients — one that works within their existing workflows and business processes.”

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 is a registered trademark 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.

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