REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 26, 2002 — Microsoft Corp. today launched SQL Server (TM) 2000 Notification Services, the high-performance application platform that generates timely and personalized notification messages for a wide range of client devices. Notification Services extends the SQL Server 2000 data management platform, offering businesses new ways to engage their customers by providing them with critical information according to their delivery preferences.
“Immediate access to information is critical in business today; however, users aren’t constantly sitting in front of a terminal waiting for important data,”
said Mark Shainman, senior research analyst at META Group Inc.
“With the scalability of server technology and the variety of client interfaces and devices today, it is important for database platforms to support the technology that enables developers to quickly build notification applications to deliver critical information in a timely and personalized manner.”
Microsoft is seeing tremendous support for Notification Services from both customers and partners. Customers such as Clalit Health Services, Consorzio Gruppo Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), Nasdaq.com, NYTimes.com and Townsend Analytics Ltd. are now using Notification Services to deliver critical data that is customized for their customers. In addition, solution partners including Centerpost Corp., Clarity Consulting Inc., DevelopMentor Inc., HP, KPMG Consulting Inc. and MobileSys Inc. are also providing complementary services that enhance the functionality in Notification Services.
“We have seen incredible support for Notification Services since we launched the beta at Tech-Ed,”
said Gordon Mangione, vice president of SQL Server at Microsoft.
“Customers have made it clear that this tool is crucial for them to raise the value and class of information they provide their own customer base.”
SQL Server 2000 Notification Services takes advantage of the scalability of SQL Server 2000 and the extensibility of the Microsoft®
.NET Framework. Notification applications can be built rapidly using a simple yet powerful programming framework and deployed on an efficient and highly-scalable server environment. Robust notification applications can easily be developed in a few days with Notification Services.
Today, SQL Server 2000 Notification Services is being used in the following ways:
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Centerpost. Customers building their own notification application with SQL Server 2000 Notification Services can use Centerpost SmartDelivery to deliver the messages via voice, voicemail, fax, e-mail, SMS/wireless and .NET Alerts — all without installing hardware or complicated software.
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Clalit Health Services. Clalit is Israel’s largest healthcare organization. Its application delivers critical lab results to patients and doctors throughout the country, enabling faster medical decisions and improving medical attention and service overall.
“Using Notification Services, for the first time, doctors and clients are available to respond in real time to lab results, and to reach faster treatment when needed,”
said Gadi Gilon, CIO and head of the computing and IT division at Clalit Health Services.
“For customers of the system, it’s an improved service; for our IT division, it’s another dream coming into reality.”
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Consorzio Gruppo Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Operating since 1472, Monte dei Paschi di Siena is the world’s oldest bank and the fourth largest banking group in Italy. The bank’s intranet application will help it improve workflow productivity and management of critical document processing.
“Our goal was to let the information flow to Corporate Portal users (no matter how many or where they are), freeing employees from the task of manually searching for updates in documents they use for their business,”
said Elena Innocenti, Corporate Portal project manager at Consorzio Operativo Gruppo MPS.
“Notification Services helped us achieve this by providing a highly extensible framework on which we have been able to satisfy our business requirements.”
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DevelopMentor. DevelopMentor is an education company that has released a new training course, Essential Notification Server, for building Notification Server applications. The three-day, hands-on developer course allows customers to begin building their Notification Server applications in class.
“Notification Services has such a good ease-of-use story because we can actually have our customers developing real applications in class instead of applications that only demonstrate Notification Services’ capabilities,”
said Mike Abercrombie, CEO and president of DevelopMentor.
“Our customers can then take the applications they built in class to work and deploy immediately. This could only happen with Notification Services because it is so easy to use.”
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Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. DrKW is the investment banking division of Dresdner Bank, a member of the worldwide Allianz Group. The bank’s intranet application monitors a wide range of events occurring in its back-office systems and delivers online notifications to its investment bankers and traders.
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HP. HP plans to offer consulting and integration services to develop and rapidly deploy IT solutions for SQL Server 2000 Notification Services.
“HP has proven expertise and experience in planning, designing and implementing IT solutions based on Microsoft .NET software,”
said Rick Fricchione, vice president of HP Enterprise Microsoft Services.
“With the exciting new SQL Server 2000 Notification Services, HP intends to provide comprehensive solutions that enable enterprise customers to achieve higher levels of business agility.”
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MobileSys. MobileSys provides a delivery infrastructure that enables SQL Server 2000 Notification Services applications to send key data to virtually any wireless device, anywhere in the world, through secure and reliable messaging.
“Knowing that in today’s competitive business environment close customer relations is the key to success in the marketplace, MobileSys added its Network Delivery Channel to Microsoft Notification Services, giving businesses and developers access to the MobileSys Network. Together, both solutions provide developers with a foundation for personalized customer and employee communications in a secure and reliable environment,”
said David Coelho, president and chief executive officer of MobileSys.
“We at MobileSys are very pleased to be given the opportunity to integrate our wireless messaging capabilities with Microsoft’s new product, further enabling enterprise companies to send critical information through any preferred wireless device to any location at any time.”
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Nasdaq.com. Nasdaq.com is the world’s largest electronic stock exchange. Its Internet application will allow subscribers to receive personalized notification regarding financial data changes relevant to individual customers, both to improve customer awareness of market movements and to provide critical information, fast.
“Nasdaq has been impressed with the stability and performance of SQL Server 2000 Notification Services as a platform for the new offerings we are rolling out to our customers and partners,”
said John Delta, vice president and general manager of Nasdaq.com.
“We are excited with how easy it is to extend and scale our offerings with Notification Services to provide critical data to our customers in new and innovative ways.”
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NYTimes.com. NYTimes.com’s new real estate notification offering allows customers of one of the most prestigious online brands in news today to subscribe for fast notifications of new real estate listings in the highly competitive East Coast market. By specifying attributes of the property, renters or buyers instruct the system to automatically generate and send a notification to them whenever a matching property is listed the New York Times real estate classified section.
“Building the New York Times Real Estate Tracker with Notification Services offers multiple benefits: It provides our users with a timesaving tool, it helps brokers sell properties more quickly, and it builds loyalty and traffic for our Web site,”
said Jeff Moriarty, director of classified operations for NYTimes.com.
“Notification Services also gives us the flexibility to extend Real Estate Tracker to other location-based platforms in the future.”
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Townsend Analytics. Townsend Analytics Ltd. provides Hottrend, a real-time notification offering that monitors stock market trading activities and generates and delivers notifications whenever unusual trading is detected.
“The simple programming framework and scalable server solution based on SQL Server allows us to quickly develop and deploy innovative notification applications within the RealTick data display and trading platform,”
said Stuart Townsend, president of Townsend Analytics.
“These provide the customer with convenient access to targeted and customized information that will enable them to take action, if needed, before potential opportunities evaporate or loss is realized.”
Notification Services is available for download today. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ns/ .
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is the complete database and analysis offering for rapidly delivering the next generation of scalable e-commerce, line-of-business and data warehousing solutions. It dramatically reduces the time required to bring these applications to market, while offering the scalability needed for the most demanding environments. SQL Server 2000 is the next-generation database of the .NET Enterprise Servers and an integral part of the Microsoft .NET Platform. More information on Microsoft SQL Server can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ .
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