Gates Touts Tools for Success in the Internet’s New Phase

ATLANTA, June 19, 2001 — In his keynote address to corporate customers and partners at TechEd 2001, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corp., rallied attendees by predicting an explosion of XML Web services that will revolutionize the way developers build, deploy and integrate applications. In particular, Gates called attention to the significance of the 10th anniversary of Microsoft® Visual Basic® , the world’s most widely used programming language, by announcing the final beta versions of Visual Studio® .NET, including Visual Basic .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft’s development ecosystem for XML Web services, which are immediately available.

To underscore the importance of XML Web services to Microsoft’s strategy, Gates announced that the next version of Windows® Server, formerly code-named
“Whistler,”
will include the .NET Framework and be called Windows.NET Server. Gates also announced a variety of developer tools including a toolkit for mobile applications; a developer edition of the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) XML Web services registry; and a set of peer-to-peer samples using the .NET Framework; he also introduced many customers that are already running their businesses on XML Web services using Microsoft .NET technologies.

“Microsoft .NET is Microsoft’s strategy for delivering XML Web services that will enable the next generation of computing,”
Gates said.
“Microsoft is committed to providing developers with the very best products and technologies for building XML Web services, positioning them to play a central role in shaping the future of computing and meeting customer needs.”

About the Announcements

  • Visual Studio.NET and the .NET Framework Beta 2: The .NET Framework is Microsoft’s XML Web services engine, providing a unified environment built from the ground up for running XML Web services and integrating them with other applications. Visual Studio.NET is Microsoft’s rapid application development (RAD) tool for building next-generation Web applications and XML Web services on the .NET Framework. Together these technologies provide support for multiple programming languages and automatically handle many common programming tasks, freeing developers to rapidly create XML Web services and other applications using their language of choice. Responding to customer demand, Microsoft is making available an ASP.NET Go Live license, which allows beta customers to deploy applications in production environments. This unprecedented move is a response to the heavy demand for ASP.NET and the high quality of the prerelease software.

  • Windows. NET Server: Microsoft announced that the product formerly code-named
    “Whistler”
    will include the .NET Framework and be called Windows .NET Servers. In addition, the .NET Framework will be available via download to run on Windows 2000 Server products.
    “Windows .NET Servers uses XML Web services to expand the platform from a single PC to include federations of communicating clients, servers, smart devices and XML Web services,”
    said Cliff Reeves, vice president for Windows .NET Server at Microsoft.
    “The inclusion of the .NET Framework in Windows .NET Servers shows the significance of the XML Web services strategy to Microsoft.”

  • Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit Beta 2: Microsoft also announced and demonstrated the Mobile Internet Toolkit, which makes mobility support intrinsic to the .NET Platform. Built on the .NET Framework’s ASP.NET technology and integrated with Visual Studio.NET, Mobile Internet Toolkit is an ASP.NET Web application development environment for building mobile Web applications for more than 20 diverse devices, whether they understand WML (WAP), cHTML (iMode) or HTML (Pocket PC).

  • UDDI Developer Edition: Microsoft also announced UDDI Developer Edition, a UDDI registry that integrates with Visual Studio.NET to enable developers to run a local copy of the UDDI registry for testing in preparation for posting to a production UDDI registry.

  • Peer-to-Peer Samples: Microsoft demonstrated a set of code samples that illustrate how to build peer-to-peer applications using the .NET Framework.

Making it Real

Hundreds of partners and customers such as Continental Airlines Inc., Harris Interactive, Zagat Survey LLC and Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) are on hand at TechEd to show off their latest Web applications and XML Web services. During his keynote, Gates was joined on stage by Mats Fagerlund, vice president of Sales and Distribution Services at SAS. Fagerlund demonstrated how SAS, which has more than 343,000 flights each year and last year flew more than 23 million passengers to 92 destinations in 31 countries, built and deployed XML Web services using Visual Studio.NET and the .NET Framework. These applications and XML Web services allow airline customers to check their flight status and update their reservations from a variety of wireless devices.

“The Microsoft .NET Platform was an easy choice to make. It allowed us to deliver customized pages for myriad devices quickly and cost-effectively, plus we have the flexibility to build in exciting new features that will help SAS serve customers even better in the future,”
said Peter M
ü
ller, deputy director, Scandinavian IT Group.

Visual Studio.NET, the .NET Framework, the Mobile Internet Toolkit, the UDDI Developer Edition, and the Peer-to-Peer samples are all available today through the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN® ) at http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ .

About TechEd

TechEd, one of Microsoft’s premier developer training events, which annually reaches more than 400,000 people worldwide, provides attendees with access to technical experts, the latest technical information and hands-on labs to learn the skills they need to build state-of-the-art solutions. Sponsors of Tech●Ed 2001 include BindView Corp., Compaq Computer Corp.,

Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., NetIQ Corp. and VERITAS Software Corp.

About 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.

Microsoft, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, Windows and MSDN 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.

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