Microsoft To Hold Developer Conference

Approximately 800 developers from Microsoft industry partner and customer companies will receive valuable training and instruction on developing solutions on the Microsoft® Office System platform at the first Microsoft Office System Developer Conference.

The conference will take place Feb. 2-4 at the Microsoft Conference Center (msdn.microsoft.com) in Redmond, Wash. Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates will provide a keynote address.

"Microsoft continues to provide excellent tools and resources and a solid platform through the Microsoft Office System that we're able to leverage in delivering rich, high-performance enterprise applications to our midmarket customers," said James Norwood, senior director of product marketing for Epicor Software Corp., a leading provider of integrated enterprise software solutions to the midmarket such as Epicor for Service Enterprises, which integrates with Microsoft Project Server 2003.

Microsoft designed the new developer conference to help professional developers and architects learn how to build enterprise-class solutions using Microsoft Office System products and enabling technologies.

The conference highlights Microsoft's commitment to helping independent software vendors (ISVs), systems integrators (SIs) and enterprise companies get the most value out of the Microsoft Office System platform.

"This is our first developer conference for the entire Microsoft Office System, signifying the transformation of Microsoft Office from a suite of products to a platform on which developers can build valuable solutions for Microsoft Office System customers," said Adam LeVasseur, group product manager in the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft.

Microsoft's commitment to celebrating and supporting solution providers' efforts to secure new-business opportunities around the world is a critical component of the company's partner ecosystem.

Today, more than 70,000 partners are trained on how to build, customize and use Microsoft Office System solutions. These partners have delivered more than 400 new solutions since the Microsoft Office System was launched in October 2003 for a total of more than 2,300 Office-based solutions.