Microsoft Announces Visual Studio for Applications

REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 16, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. today announced Microsoft® Visual Studio® for Applications (VSA), the first technology that delivers easy and widespread customization of Web applications. VSA provides corporations and ISVs that want to take full advantage of the business opportunities presented by the Web with the ability to tailor Web applications with specialized business logic. ISVs and corporations can easily integrate VSA customization technology into their homegrown and packaged distributed applications. This enables customers to use the familiar Visual Basic event driven model to customize core business logic running on the server without intimate knowledge of the application. By integrating VSA, ISVs and corporations can enable end users to customize those applications.

Visual Studio for Applications supports the writing of custom code using Visual Basic.NET, the next version of the world’s most popular programming language. ISVs and corporations can rely on the more than 3 million developers working with the Visual Basic® development system worldwide. VSA has a language neutral architecture, and Visual Basic.NET is the first language to support VSA. In subsequent releases, other .NET languages will be able to plug into the VSA architecture.

“Microsoft is thrilled to be able to deliver the first technology that will enable rich customization,”
said Yuval Neeman, vice president of Developer Division Management at Microsoft.
“We are providing customers a real competitive advantage — the ability to use familiar tools and languages, saving them time and money, while delivering a product that meets their customers’ unique needs.”

VSA, through its built-in support for Visual Studio.NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework, enables customers and ISVs to harness the power of the .NET platform. This powerful combination provides the scalability and performance necessary for customized business logic and simplifies the process of developing, deploying and maintaining enterprise-level applications.

VSA Early Adopters

Visual Studio for Applications is available for early evaluation by interested industry partners. To date, Great Plains Software Inc., Epicor Software Corp., Marlborough Stirling, Ci Technologies and NetIQ Corp. are early adopters of VSA, working closely with Microsoft to make VSA customization available in the next generation of their distributed Web applications. Companies who wish to evaluate VSA can contact Summit Software Co., the sales agent for VSA, at [email protected].

VSA is scheduled to be available for widespread evaluation in the spring of 2001 when Visual Studio.NET beta 2 is released and will ship at the same time as Visual Studio.NET in the second half of 2001.

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, Visual Studio and Visual Basic are either registered trademarks or trademarks 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.

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.

Addendum — Quote Sheet

Microsoft Visual Studio for Applications

“Microsoft VSA appears to be a perfect fit with our development plans for our Plant2Business suite of products. We believe VSA will provide our customers with a seamless way to tailor functionality and customize business logic in distributed applications accessed by rich Windows clients, Web browsers and mobile devices.”

— Tony Watkins
Director of Technology
Ci Technologies

“VSA harnesses the power of the Microsoft .NET platform that, when combined with our deep expertise in business applications, will help bring next generation solutions to small and medium businesses worldwide.”

— Vern Strong
Senior Vice President
Emerging Platform Services
Great Plains

“Visual Studio for Applications integration will provide a great advantage to our customers, giving them even greater flexibility to tailor e by Epicor to their business processes and to the Web.”

— John Hiraoka
Senior Vice President
Marketing and Business Development
Epicor

“We believe the customization technology will enable our clients to launch financial products even faster than is currently the case, allow software integration specialists to embed Marlborough Stirling solutions into other applications, and create opportunities for our clients’ own IT teams to use Marlborough Stirling’s functionality in their own developments.”

–Tony Klim
Director of Strategy and Marketing
Marlborough Stirling

“By supporting VSA, NetIQ will offer a familiar scripting environment, while bringing rapid development and high-value customization options to its customers.”

— Tom Kemp
Senior Vice President of Products
NetIQ

“We’ve greatly enjoyed working with Microsoft over the last five years to help expand the VBA market. It is exciting to have the opportunity to help Microsoft achieve their vision of highly programmable applications on the the .NET Platform as the development of distributed Web applications evolves.”

— Bill Fisher
President
Summit Software Company

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