REDMOND, Wash., July 24, 1997 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the formation of the Application Developers Customer Unit (ADCU) and the appointment of Charles Stevens, formerly vice president of Microsoft Far East, to head the new division.
In response to growing customer demand for innovative applications utilizing the Microsoft® Windows NT® operating system and the Microsoft BackOffice® family, ADCU will globally expand its evangelism and technical support for independent software vendors (ISVs) and key influencers in the business applications-buying process. ADCU will also drive customer demand for BackOffice applications through industry-specific sales and marketing activities.
”
ADCU’s mission is to capitalize on the strong marketplace momentum of Windows NT and to establish the BackOffice family – including Microsoft SQL Server
™, Microsoft Exchange Server and Visual Studio™ – as the superior development platform for all new and existing business applications,”
said Steve Ballmer, executive vice president of sales and support at Microsoft.
“ADCU will work closely with the growing number of ISVs who are migrating their current solutions, or building new applications, to take advantage of the cost savings and performance gains of the open Windows NT and BackOffice platform.”
Microsoft will focus its investment on evangelizing corporate and professional developers and forging strong relationships with global ISVs. Companies such as The Baan Co., SAP AG, PeopleSoft Inc. and J.D. Edwards are all key players in the global solutions market targeting vertical industry sectors and horizontal business solutions. A partial listing of vertical and horizontal market ISVs includes companies such as these:
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Accounting
CODA (United Kingdom)
Sage (United Kingdom)
OBIC Business Consulting Co., Ltd. (Japan)
Exact (Netherlands)
Platinum Software (United States)
Ramco (India)
Great Plains Software (United States)
Solomon Software (United States)
State of the Art (United States)
Systems Union (United Kingdom)
User Friend (China)
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Customer management
Aurum (United States)
Clarify (United States)
royalblue CIS (United Kingdom)
Scopus (United States)
Siebel (United States)
Success Technologies (Australia)
Vantive (United States)
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Document management
Documentum (United States)
Eastman Software (United States)
FileNet (United States)
Mosaix (United States)
PC Docs (United States)
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Electronic commerce
Trintech (Ireland)
Sterling Commerce (United States)
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Enterprise resource planning
(ERP)
Baan (Netherlands)
Fourth Shift (Global)
J.D. Edwards (United States)
Marcam (United States)
PeopleSoft (United States)
SAP AG (Germany)
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Financial servic es
Infosel (Mexico)
Prologic (Canada)
Sungard Capital Markets (United States)
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Health care
IDX Corp. (United States)
IMNET (United States)
Picis (Global)
Shared Medical Systems (United States
and Pan-European)
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Manufacturing
Intellution (United States)
Intergraph (Global)
Siemens Automation (Germany)
Wonderware (United States)
Verifone (United States)
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Retail
ICL Retail Systems (Pan-European)
MICROS Systems Inc. (United States)
Ouroumoff Informatique (France)
ADCU will have a strong global focus, employing more than 550 people worldwide, including approximately 200 in the United States, 250 in Europe and 100 in Asia. The new customer unit will build upon the work begun by Microsoft’s Industry Sales and Marketing Group in the United States, Europe and Japan, by greatly expanding the number of ISV partnerships in both vertical and horizontal markets. The targeted vertical markets include financial services, health care, government, retail, distribution and manufacturing, and the horizontal markets of electronic commerce, accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer management, and document management, imaging and workflow management. ADCU will deploy technical specialists in these markets to support programs for Microsoft SQL Server and BackOffice and to drive COM-based, industry-specific initiatives.
“As our customers increasingly compete on a global basis, they need not only a world-class platform, but also specific classes of applications that manage their unique business processes,”
said Charles Stevens, vice president of ADCU.
“Microsoft works in partnership with worldwide ISVs to provide enterprise customers with industry-specific technology platforms – based on industry-driven standards – that allow businesses to deploy mission-critical, line-of-business applications at a fraction of the cost and at higher levels of performance than similar applications running on mainframe or mid-range platforms.”
A 13-year Microsoft veteran, ADCU Vice President Charles Stevens spent the past three years helping to increase Microsoft Far East revenues an average of 70 percent per year. Prior to that, Stevens worked in a number of capacities at corporate headquarters, including running the database group for five years and launching Microsoft Access and Visual Basic® programming system products as well as working on the acquisition of the FoxPro® database management system. Stevens will officially join ADCU on Sept. 1.
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, Windows NT, BackOffice, Visual Studio, Visual Basic and FoxPro 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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