NEW ORLEANS, April 25, 2000 — Today at the Windows® Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2000, Microsoft Corp. announced the creation of the Embedded and Appliance Platforms Group to be headed by vice president Bill Veghte. This new group will be responsible for all the embedded platforms, tools and marketing efforts within Microsoft. Recognizing the growing importance of the embedded and appliance marketplace, as well as the customer demand for flexible, reliable, connected solutions, Microsoft also unveiled a cohesive embedded and appliance platform strategy. This strategy will focus on delivering adaptable, scalable embedded platforms for 32-bit and above connected devices, enabling rich applications and Internet services for a wide range of solutions.
As part of its strategy to offer a broad range of solutions to meet the diverse needs of embedded and appliance customers and partners, Microsoft is committed to creating a flexible business model that allows industry partners to easily engage and utilize the pieces of the Windows embedded technology portfolio that they need to meet their resource and time-to-market requirements. In addition, the strategy will encompass a new branding effort that is designed to simplify and unify all the Microsoft embedded and appliance solutions under a single brand: Windows Powered. This new brand will communicate to customers the reliability, richness, ease of use and connectivity associated with the Windows embedded family.
“The market is rapidly moving toward connected devices that offer rich Internet services and applications, and with this new focus and organization, Microsoft is committed to enabling this shift to happen,”
Veghte said.
“The Windows embedded family offers an incredibly rich technology portfolio. Coupling this breadth of technology offerings with aggressive componentization and a flexible business model offers an exciting opportunity for our partners.”
The Windows embedded family of technology adds a unique value to the embedded and appliance marketplace. Windows-based solutions offer the richest platform for dynamic applications and Internet services, a consistent programming model and familiar development tools, tight interoperability and migrations between devices, and seamless access to applications and Internet services. This will enable partners to quickly and easily build end-to-end solutions to meet their customers’ specific needs.
Microsoft will broaden its family of embedded technologies, which currently include Windows NT® Embedded 4.0 and Windows CE 2.12, with the upcoming availability of several new products: Windows CE 3.0, Windows CE Platform Builder 3.0 and eMbedded Visual Tools 3.0. With this comprehensive set of embedded tools and technologies, Microsoft is committed to bringing the technical excellence of Windows to the embedded and appliance marketplace.
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, Windows and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
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.
