Microsoft Launches XML Web Services Revolution With Visual Studio .NET and .NET Framework

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 13, 2002 — In the most significant product launch of the new Microsoft® .NET era, Microsoft Corp. Chief Software Architect Bill Gates today launched Visual Studio® .NET and the .NET Framework, the application development tool and platform for .NET applications, at the VSLive! 2002 Conference in San Francisco. In a keynote address and worldwide webcast, Gates kicked off launch events around the world and hailed the two products as key to the development experience that will drive the phenomenon of XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework are the cornerstones of .NET and represent a major milestone in bringing Microsofts vision of XML Web services to reality.

“Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework are among the most important products ever released by Microsoft and underscore our long-term commitment to developer success,”
Gates said.
“As the first fully integrated development environment for building XML Web services and next-generation Internet applications, Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework will enable the next big wave of developer opportunity, creating XML Web services that will soon become the basis for all major new software development.”

With Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework, developers can easily create and deploy XML Web services on the .NET Platform. XML Web services provide businesses with a new way to employ the Internet as a development platform, and enable businesses to seamlessly interoperate across disparate systems and platforms. With support for more than 20 programming languages, these products enable developers to extend their existing skills to embrace the new world of XML Web services.

“Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework are the culmination of a four-plus-year project to create a brand-new software development platform,”
said Anders Hejlsberg, distinguished engineer at Microsoft, in his keynote to the VSLive! developer audience.
“I am thrilled to see the incredible excitement among software developers as they begin receiving the final version of the tools they need to build and deploy applications for the .NET Platform.”

Momentum Growing for .NET Development

The official launch of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework is the final step in delivering these products into the hands of customers who have eagerly awaited Microsofts new integrated development environment. The launch culminates with events in 150 cities worldwide, with more than 125,000 developers celebrating the final release of the products that enjoyed one of the broadest beta adoptions of a prerelease product ever. More than 3.5 million copies of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework were distributed during beta testing. Since their availability in January to MSDN® developer program subscribers, more than 350,000 customers have received the final version of these products.

Other demonstrations of increasing .NET momentum include the following:

  • 250,000 developers have received training through more than 200 courses on .NET.

  • 190 add-on tools are launching simultaneously with Visual Studio .NET.

  • More than 200 books on .NET for developers are now available.

  • 764 MSDN user groups represent a 30 percent increase in the past six months.

  • The MSDN Academic Alliance includes 1,500 computer science department members at 815 institutions, reaching 1,500 faculty and more than 200,000 students.

  • Industry recognition of Visual Studio .NET has resulted in the following awards:

    • InfoWorld 2001 Technology of the Year

    • PC Magazine Technical Excellence Award

    • Intelligent Enterprise Readers Choice Award

    • VARBusiness Editors Choice, Top 10 New Products of the Year

In addition, a new .NET international user group association was announced earlier in the week with the creation of the International .NET Association (INETA) of User Groups. As a charter sponsor of INETA, Microsoft will provide training support for the INETA Speakers Bureau in providing content to its members.

Microsoft Enterprise Server Web Services Toolkits Enhancing .NET Development

In addition to the growing industry momentum for building and deploying XML Web services on the .NET Platform, Gates keynote also highlighted news that Microsoft released new Web services toolkits for BizTalk™ Server 2002 and SQL Server™
2000 for integrating with Visual Studio .NET. The BizTalk Server Toolkit for Microsoft .NET will provide additional support for orchestrating XML Web services through its integration with Visual Studio .NET. The SQL Server 2000 Web Services Toolkit will enable developers to easily use Visual Studio .NET to extend the capabilities of applications built on SQL Server 2000.

Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Customers Deploying Now

In his keynote address, Gates highlighted several of the more than 1,000 new customer deployments on .NET, including those from Autodesk Inc., LOreal and Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. These new customers have already experienced productivity gains and improved application development cycles using the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET to create and deploy XML Web services.

Autodesk, the worlds leading design and digital content creation resource for more than 4 million customers worldwide, has built a new application development platform for the rapid creation of design visualization applications on the Microsoft .NET Platform.

“We felt that when it came to moving our own developers, our customers and our ISVs onto a new technology base oriented around XML Web services, that Microsoft Visual Studio .NET was clearly the tool that was going to give them the most productivity,”
said Scott Borduin, chief technical officer at Autodesk.
“.NET has enabled us to very quickly take advantage of XML Web services in our applications.”

LOreal, a worldwide leader in beauty with brands including Lanc
ô
me, Giorgio Armani, Garnier, Maybelline, Ralph Lauren and Redken, built a new e-commerce system in just four months to flexibly integrate with its partners worldwide.

“Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework have enabled us to create Web sites with multi-process, multi-devices and multi-languages,”
said Jerome Peyrelevade, head technology officer of the business division at LOreal.
“There are some tools for management of the caching, management of the memory and all that gives the developer the opportunity to work much faster with much more efficiency and of course we save a lot of money.”

Merrill Lynch, one of the worlds leading financial management and advisory companies, consolidated all of its 800-number lines serving more than 25 million customers into one master telephone service, improving maintenance, fault tolerance and performance.


At Merrill Lynch weve found that .NET is allowing us to get products to market quicker than we have historically.
And ultimately this drives the bottom line impact,”
said Byron Vielehr, chief technology officer, private client technology, at Merrill Lynch.

New Partners Announcing New Integrated Add-On Products

Gates also announced three new partners that

will provide

developer tools products integrated

with

Visual Studio .NET: Computer Associates International Inc., Groove Networks Inc. and IBM Corp.

The addition of these partners products

furthers Microsofts commitment to its Open Tools Platform strategy and satisfies its

customers

need for integrated tools that complete the enterprise software development life cycle.

Furthermore, Groove Networks joined the ranks of 70 other Visual Studio .NET Integration Program (VSIP) members, including Rational Software, Compuware and Crystal Decisions. In addition, Gates highlighted the fact that IBMs DB2 database software will be enabled for Visual Studio .NET.

Microsofts VSIP partners include tools, language and component vendors, independent software vendors (ISVs), academics and researchers. VSIP is a key component of the Visual Studio

.NET Open Tools Platform and is designed to facilitate productivity, flexibility and tight integration — which in turn give customers a more complete set of solutions tailored to their specific needs.

New Development Environments for the .NET Platform

In addition to vendors choosing to integrate into the Visual Studio .NET environment, two prominent application development companies announced their tools for the .NET Framework. Borland Software Corp. announced that Delphi and C++Builder would target the .NET Framework, and Macromedia Inc. announced that Dreamweaver UltraDev would target ASP.NET. These new tools demonstrate the continuing momentum and openness of the .NET development platform.

Microsoft Announces New Microsoft .NET Component Builder Program

Microsoft also announced the Microsoft .NET Component Builder Program, providing component vendors with resources to effectively build and market components using the latest Microsoft .NET technologies. The program will be jointly run by Microsoft and the Component Vendor Consortium (CVC), a nonprofit organization representing third-party ISVs and a recognized authority on component quality. More information on the Microsoft .NET Component Builder Program is available by sending e-mail to [email protected].

Powerful Tools and Platform Making .NET Development Fast, Flexible and Fun

Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework make up Microsofts first full IDE for building XML Web services and next-generation Internet applications on the .NET Platform. Visual Studio .NET is Microsofts rapid application development (RAD) tool, enabling developers to create and deploy broad-reach Web applications for any device and any platform. More information about Visual Studio .NET can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ . The .NET Framework provides the programming model of the .NET Platform, making it possible to deploy and run XML Web services and other types of applications, including client-, server- and service-based applications. More information on the .NET Framework can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/default.asp .

Pricing and General Availability of Visual Studio .NET

Visual Studio .NET is offered in three editions:

  • Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect enables software architects and senior developers to build large-scale applications for infrastructure development. The estimated retail price for Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect is $2,499.

  • Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Developer enables development teams to rapidly build XML Web services and enterprise applications that target any device. The estimated retail price for Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Developer is $1,799.

  • Visual Studio .NET Professional enables developers to rapidly build XML Web services and next-generation applications for any Internet device. The estimated retail price for Visual Studio .NET Professional is $1,079.

Standard editions of Visual Basic® .NET, Visual C++® .NET and Visual C#™
.NET are available for a suggested retail price of $109.

Localized Versions of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework SDK Available Soon

In addition to English, Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK) will be available in eight languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and Korean. These localized versions will give the developer tool an unprecedented global reach and scale.

The localization effort was carried out in close cooperation with Bowne Global Solutions (BGS), the worlds leading provider of localization services. In Microsofts largest single product localization effort, BGS

localized over 750,000 words of software user interface and 14 million words of documentation.

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 Studio, MSDN, BizTalk, Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Visual C# 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 Microsofts corporate information pages.

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