DENVER, Oct. 12, 1998 — In his keynote speech at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference today, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates announced an agreement to license Microsoft® Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) to Corel Corp. VBA is the world’s most popular programming environment for customizing and extending applications. In a separate announcement, Corel outlined plans to integrate VBA across its product line, including Corel® WordPerfect® Suite and CorelDRAW
™
.
“We are excited to have Corel join the growing community of ISVs integrating VBA technology,”
said Paul Gross, vice president of the developer tools division at Microsoft.
“This partnership with Corel is an excellent example of Microsoft and ISVs working together to meet the needs of customers. Through VBA, customers can integrate applications from many vendors to build comprehensive line of business solutions out of existing packaged software.”
Application Customization and VBA
As more organizations focus on core competencies rather than on software development, they turn to packaged applications for faster implementation and lower cost. VBA provides tools for customizing these applications to meet specific business needs and speeds integration with corporate data and other applications based on Component Object Model (COM). Products that expose their functionality through COM and embed VBA provide a
“buy and customize”
alternative to building software solutions from scratch.
“We are delighted to work together with Microsoft and provide our customers with VBA, the premier technology for application customization,”
said Dr. Michael Cowpland, president and chief executive officer of Corel Corp.
“VBA extends the value of Corel’s products by enabling our customers to tap into the power of millions of professional developers already familiar with Visual Basic. Now developers can easily create customized solutions that integrate Corel products with other VBA-enabled applications.”
About Microsoft VBA
VBA is a member of the Visual Basic family, the world’s leading component-based development tool. VBA-enabled applications are immediately accessible to the more than
3 million developers using the Visual Basic language. VBA is available to third parties through the VBA licensing program. Leading applications in dozens of vertical industries integrate VBA as their embedded solution for application customization and integration. A list of companies licensing Visual Basic for Applications is available on the VBA Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vba/ .
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
Microsoft and Visual Basic are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Corel, WordPerfect and CorelDRAW are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corp. or Corel Corporation Ltd.
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