REDMOND, Wash., April 13, 2000 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that its Visio® product line has recently won several prestigious industry awards. Of the recent wins, two are Readers’ Choice Awards from Visual Basic® Programmer’s Journal (VBPJ): The Software Design, Frameworks, & Modeling Tools award was given to Visio 2000 Enterprise Edition, and honors in the Graphics, Charting & Multimedia category were awarded to Visio 2000 Professional Edition. In addition, Visio Technical 5.0 earned a Control Engineering 1999 Editors’ Choice Award. These are the first awards bestowed upon the Visio products since the company’s acquisition by Microsoft, which was completed in January.
The VBPJ award winners were announced at the Visual Basic Insiders Technical Summit (VBITS) conference held in San Francisco in February. The winners were featured in the magazine’s Spring 2000 Buyers Guide and Product Directory, which is currently available online at http://www.vbpj.com/upload/free/features/vbpj/2000/bg00/
tocbg00/bgtoc.asp . Print copies of the special issue are also available. The awards honor products that provide innovative solutions to application development challenges. VBPJ readers select the winners based on which products are the most intriguing and innovative and promise the best value for developers using the Microsoft® Visual Basic development system.
VBPJ awarded Visio 2000 Professional Edition its Readers’ Choice designation in the Graphics, Charting & Multimedia Category, calling it
“a tool to visualize and diagram your IT organization needs, from HR, to developers, to IS.” It touted the product’s powerful capabilities, such as the Database Reverse Engineering tool, which connects to any data source using ODBC and lets users retrieve a list of tables and views and present them in a variety of notation styles. The review also mentioned the advantages of the product’s SmartShapes® technology, which make diagramming easier by providing connector lines, layering capabilities and control handles for aligning and moving objects.
The magazine lauded Visio 2000 Enterprise Edition in its Software Design, Frameworks & Modeling Tools category, saying that the product
“gives Web designers, database administrators and software architects tools to document their knowledge domains professionally.”
The review cited new features and improvements, including significantly improved network diagramming, network and database modeling, and Unified Modeling Language (UML), as well as other features.
“VBPJ readers know quality and value because they truly put these products to the test in their application development,”
said Jeff Hadfield, publisher of Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal.
“What’s exciting about all the award winners is that they demonstrate the wealth of off-the-shelf products available today to help any programmer using Visual Basic build essential, mission-critical applications more quickly. VBPJ readers select the award winners because the products help them speed the development process.”
The Control Engineering Editors’ Choice Award, which was given to Visio Technical 5.0, was showcased in the publication’s March issue and awarded at a ceremony in Chicago on March 12. Award winners were selected from the hundreds of products reviewed by the
magazine throughout the year. Awards criteria include service to the industry, technological advancement and market impact. “As one of only 40 winners of our Editors’ Choice Award, Visio has something to be proud of in having developed a product with truly outstanding innovations,
”
said Mark T. Hoske, editor in chief of Control Engineering and Control Engineering Online.
“We’re thrilled to have won these awards. The fact that Visio 5.0 continues to win honors and that the Visio 2000 products are getting awards as well point to the strength of our product line and the benefits it brings to our customers,”
said Jeremy Jaech, vice president of the Business Tools Division at 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.
