REDMOND, Wash., June 25, 1997 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that General Electric Co. (GE), the world’s largest diversified manufacturing, technology and services company, has joined the rapidly growing ranks of major corporations standardizing on Microsoft® Exchange Server and licensing Microsoft Office and BackOffice® family products for its employees worldwide. GE has already deployed Microsoft Exchange to over 51,000 desktops and by the end of this year plans to make Microsoft Exchange available to more than 100,000 GE employees around the world.
“In order to ensure that GE’s business is running effectively and that we’re delivering better service to our customers, we need a powerful messaging system to improve employee collaboration worldwide,”
said Mark Mastrianni, manager of technology at GE.
“Microsoft Exchange offers the features we need with the reliability we require to improve business processes throughout GE, and we support and encourage Microsoft’s increasingly open approach to the software.”
GE selected Microsoft Exchange over other messaging and collaboration software for its reliability, rich feature set, scalability and security. In addition to Microsoft Exchange, GE is deploying the Microsoft BackOffice family of integrated server software and Office 97, the first suite that fully integrates the ease of intelligent applications with the power of the Web.
“In the extremely competitive enterprise marketplace today, companies such as GE need to focus on running and growing their business – not on managing technology,”
said Deborah Willingham, vice president of the enterprise customer unit at Microsoft.
“By addressing specific business needs with the right product solution, Microsoft can help customers use technology to create business advantages. We’re thrilled GE has joined the growing number of companies choosing the powerful Microsoft platform – Microsoft Exchange, the Microsoft BackOffice suite and Microsoft Office products – to meet their Internet, intranet and collaboration needs.”
The Microsoft BackOffice family of integrated server software includes Microsoft SQL Server
™, SNA Server, the Windows NT® Server network operating system, Internet Information Server, Systems Management Server, Microsoft Proxy Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. Because of the native integration between messaging and groupware, database and Web components, customers using BackOffice can combine groupware applications with traditional database systems for Internet and intranet communications. Integration among the Microsoft BackOffice applications optimizes performance for all components and offers ease of use for system administrators, thus reducing the cost of administration.
In addition to Microsoft BackOffice, GE plans to deploy Microsoft Office 97 to its employees worldwide. With Internet technology an integral part of the suite, Office 97 makes it easy to create and publish Web documents, find information and collaborate with others on the Internet or a corporate intranet. Microsoft Office 97 includes Microsoft Word, Excel, the PowerPoint® presentation graphics program and Microsoft Access, as well as the new Microsoft Outlook
™
desktop information manager.
Microsoft and its worldwide industry partners deliver a total solution: integrated platforms, powerful business applications and comprehensive global services that drive the success of its enterprise customers. Large organizations can choose to work directly with Microsoft or select from among the many highly qualified Microsoft enterprise partners to implement solutions based on the Microsoft technology platform. Based on Microsoft best practices and supported by over 118,000 Microsoft Certified Professionals, more than 2,000 customers in 55 countries are realizing significant business value and competitive advantage from Microsoft’s worldwide enterprise solutions.
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.
Microsoft, BackOffice, Windows NT, PowerPoint and Outlook 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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