Microsoft to Connected Systems Using Visual Studio and .NET

Three years after the launch of Visual Studio® .NET, S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp., highlighted vast customer, partner and academic adoption of Microsoft® .NET to build connected systems, Web services and smart-client applications using Microsoft's development tools.

In his keynote address at Fawcette Technical Publications' VSLive! San Francisco 2005, Somasegar also unveiled new resources for enterprise developers, announced Microsoft's expanded partnership with Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIPs) Micro Focus International Ltd. and LogicLibrary Inc., and highlighted the success of .NET customer American Healthways Inc.

Somasegar also announced the upcoming availability of the second community technology preview (CTP) of Microsoft's presentation subsystem code-named "Avalon," slated for release in March 2005. This CTP introduces several advances including new controls, improvements to the layout system, performance improvements and enhanced XAML support.

"Looking back at the launch of Visual Studio .NET, our goal was to empower developers to lead the world into the new era of Web services," Somasegar said.

Industry data demonstrates the progress of .NET adoption. Forrester Research Inc.'s May 2004 report, titled "The State of Technology Adoption," showed that 56 percent of North American companies surveyed planned to use .NET for the majority of their development work in 2004.

Micro Focus, a leading provider of legacy application development and deployment software, today announced it has selected Microsoft Visual Studio as its single integrated development environment (IDE) for legacy application development targeting a wide range of deployment platforms.

"As Microsoft .NET technologies continue to take a stronger foothold in the enterprise, our strengthened relationship with Microsoft is of continued importance to our customers who are seeking simpler and faster ways to build connected systems," said Tony Hill, chief executive officer at Micro Focus.

Microsoft today also announced the availability of new resources for enterprise developers wanting to build connected systems: the Connected Systems Business Kit and the patterns & practices Enterprise Library.

The Connected Systems Business Kit is a collection of sample applications, presentations, white papers and videos that illustrate how to implement connected systems and service-oriented architectures using current technologies. The Connected Systems Business Kit is available for customers at http://www.microsoft.com/connectedsystems .

The Tablet PC SDK 1.7 plugs right in to Visual Studio .NET and, soon, Visual Studio 2005, enabling developers to create interactive ink-based applications for the Tablet PC.

Today, there are over 200 applications available for purchase or download optimized to run on Tablet PCs. Microsoft expects the number of applications to grow steadily.

Within the last nine months, the number of independent software vendors (ISVs) planning to integrate pen and ink in their Windows®-based applications has doubled to over 450 companies worldwide.

Microsoft is committed to increasing the ease of development of Tablet PC applications and broadening the market for Tablet PC applications, and is proud to announced two enhancements to this end.

Today, together with 3Leaf Development, Microsoft announced a new Tablet PC Game SDK. This SDK will foster the development of casual games that incorporate some of the unique features of the Tablet PC, especially pen and ink functionality.