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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / AUGUST 4, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 31
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Systems/Enterprise:
MICROSOFT EXPANDS .NET ECOSYSTEM
WITH NEW VISUAL STUDIO
Microsoft Corp. broadened the reach of its developer partner programs to
provide a more diverse mix of partners with a wider variety of opportunities
in the Microsoft .NET ecosystem. The new program, renamed the Visual Studio
Industry Partner (VSIP) program, provides three tiers of membership that
deliver customized benefits to a wider range of partners, replacing the
single-tier program that has led the industry since 1999. More than 175 VSIP
partners, including AmberPoint Inc., Borland Software Corp., HP, IBM Corp.,
Intel Corp, Mercury Interactive Corp., Telelogic and others, have delivered
more than 300 products that cover the breadth of the enterprise development
life cycle.
The improved, expanded Visual Studio Industry Partner program provides free
access to the VSIP Software Development Kit (SDK), offering Visual Studio .NET
partners and customers advanced integration and customization capabilities. As
a result, partners of any size may extend the Visual Studio .NET integrated
development environment (IDE) with new project systems, visual design
interfaces, code editors and advanced debuggers.
"The inauguration of VSIP in 1999 brought new and exciting opportunities to
partners, and since then we've been listening to partners' ideas for program
refinement," said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of Server and Tools at
Microsoft. "With the new Visual Studio Industry Partner program, we are
putting those ideas in action to create a partner renaissance, opening doors
to a new segment of partners, including academic institutions, corporations
and independent software vendors, large and small."
"As a member of the Visual Studio Industry Partner program, Borland is
committed to increasing the productivity of development teams across the
enterprise," said Ted Shelton, senior vice president of business development
at Borland. "The expanded focus of the VSIP program will provide enterprises
with a broader selection of technology for .NET Framework development, helping
to increase the functionality of the Visual Studio .NET development
environment and enabling development teams to deliver better software,
faster."
The newly created VSIP program will make it easier for developers to
customize
the Visual Studio environment to better suit their needs and for independent
software vendors (ISVs) to reach millions of potential customers with
commercially successful products. In addition to the free VSIP SDK, another
new program benefit is the availability of the Visual Studio Premier Partner
edition. A special shell-only version of the Visual Studio .NET IDE, the
Visual Studio Premier Partner edition enables partners to ship the Visual
Studio IDE with their products. Fujitsu Software Corp., InstallShield Software
Corp. and Intel each announced separately that it will immediately license the
Visual Studio Premier Partner edition.
"Intel is pleased to continue its participation in the Visual Studio
Industry
Partner program. Using the Visual Studio Premier Partner edition for our VTune
Performance Analyzer exemplifies our continued commitment to provide
industry-leading products that enable developers to create high- performance
Windows-based applications on Intel processor-based platforms," said Jonathan
Khazam, general manager of the Software Products Division in Intel's Software
and Solutions Group. "A well-integrated set of tools from Intel and Microsoft
is a major productivity factor for our customers. We are very pleased to
complement and enhance the Microsoft offerings using the VSIP program."
"For years we've been delivering our strategy to extend Visual Studio by
seamlessly integrating our life-cycle solution into it," said Mike Devlin,
general manager, IBM Rational software. "Just last month, we delivered the
latest release of our tools in support of Visual Studio .NET 2003. Putting
Rational's modeling, change management, testing and run-time analysis
capabilities at the fingertips of the Visual Studio .NET developer is an
accomplishment that was afforded by the VSIP program."
Partner Programs Come Together Under Three Levels of Membership
The introduction of the Visual Studio .NET Integration Program enabled
partners to build enterprise development tools that were seamlessly integrated
into Visual Studio .NET. In addition, the Microsoft .NET Component Builder
Program offered technical information and marketing opportunities to component
and control vendors targeting the .NET Framework. Today, Microsoft's developer
partner programs come together under the Visual Studio Industry Partner
program, providing a consistent relationship with Microsoft for all enterprise
tools and component vendors. This new version of the VSIP program offers
partners three levels of engagement with Microsoft:
- Affiliate. A free level of membership for smaller companies and academic
institutions seeking easy access to the VSIP SDK, including newsgroup support
on the VSIP community site and inclusion in the online product catalog.
- Alliance. Includes Affiliate-level benefits plus a one-year MSDN
Universal subscription and enhanced co-marketing opportunities, including
participation in Microsoft press activities, case studies, events and the VSIP
logo program; component and control vendors, ISVs, and systems integrators
benefit from the Alliance level at a $3,000 annual fee.
- Premier. Includes Alliance-level benefits plus eligibility to
distribute Visual Studio .NET and license the Visual Studio Premier Partner
edition. Additional co-marketing opportunities include MSDN webcasts,
visibility on the Visual Studio Partner home page, and global marketing
activities to reach millions of Microsoft developer customers, making this
$10,000 annual fee ideal for ISVs targeting the enterprise.
Current members of the Visual Studio .NET Integration Program will
automatically be transferred into the Premier level of VSIP, while current
.NET Component Builder Program members will automatically become Alliance-
level members.
"The VSIP program enables Wilde to integrate directly into Visual Studio
.NET,
unifying the worlds of architects, designers and developers, and delivering
real architecture-driven development," said Colum Twomey, CEO of Wilde
Technologies in Dublin, Ireland. "Furthermore, it broadens opportunities to
partner companies and developers on a global scale, and we are very pleased
with Microsoft's efforts to enhance the value of VSIP for the software
ecosystem."
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