BOSTON, March 5, 1997 — As the Object World trade conference brings together the industry's leading object solution vendors this week, Microsoft Corp. announced that more than 80 software companies are already taking advantage of the open, cross-platform Microsoft^® ActiveX ™ component software architecture to build distributed computing solutions for the enterprise.

"ActiveX is an industry standard object technology for the desktop and the Internet, and now is scaling into the enterprise," said Bob Muglia, vice president, server applications division, Microsoft. "By bringing together robust distributed services, cross-platform support, Internet integration and compatibility with the world's largest base of component software, ActiveX provides real business value for developers seeking the benefits of object technology at all levels of the enterprise."

Open, Interoperable and Scalable

ActiveX component technology is supported by thousands of corporations and developers. A developer can use any tool or language to create powerful components that can run on the server and encapsulate business logic in legacy transaction systems, databases or enterprise applications on any platform.

With the release of Microsoft Transaction Server, a core service within the Microsoft Active Server, Microsoft is bringing transaction semantics and component-based software development together for the first time. Transaction Server provides the reliability and scalability needed for robust distributed computing and provides transaction semantics and a scalable server-based execution environment for ActiveX components that run at the middle tier of a distributed application.

Enterprise Vendors Embrace ActiveX and Active Server

"Microsoft and SAP are jointly working on standards for business content, called BAPIs, and distributed computing on the Internet requires an even stronger technology foundation," said Guenther Tolkmit, vice president of technology for SAP AG. "We are therefore very excited that DCOM - a major technology underpinning of our existing Internet release R/3 3.1 - and Microsoft Transaction Server combine to provide the solution for a need in a forgotten area: transaction integrity for business applications. This is essential for SAP's type of business applications."

"Our enterprise application suite, Protean, uses ActiveX today to give our Global 1,000 customers a competitive advantage, said Mike Ehrenberg, chief technology officer, process business unit at Marcam Corp." We are using DCOM as a core part of our distributed object architecture to provide the performance and scalability demanded by large enterprises. Microsoft Transaction Server breaks new ground by delivering transaction processing services for component-based applications. We look forward to the added capabilities it will bring to our product. "

"Powersoft has made a strong commitment to take advantage of the capabilities of ActiveX and DCOM, which will allow our customers to benefit from the strong infrastructure this architecture provides," said Bob Zurek, vice president of research and technology for the Powersoft development tools division at Sybase Inc. "The next version of our Optima++ RAD development product will extend our COM support to include Microsoft's Active Server technologies by allowing the creation of ActiveX-based servers."

"Object Automation is developing an object-oriented framework for industrial automation," said Dave Smith, president, Object Automation. "We recently went through a comprehensive evaluation of distributed object frameworks. We saw ActiveX with DCOM as the clear winner early on, based on its performance, robustness and open architecture."

Availability

DCOM is built into the Windows NT^® Server network operating system version 4.0 and the Windows NT Workstation operating system version 4.0. It is available for the Windows^® 95 operating system free of charge from the Microsoft Web site, http://www.microsoft.com/com/default.asp . (Connect-time charges may apply.) Microsoft Transaction Server is available now at an introductory price of approximately $1,995 per server. Customers can download a free evaluation copy from the Internet at http://www.microsoft. com/ntserver/ .

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, ActiveX, Windows NT and Windows 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 registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft's corporate information pages.

Vendors Embracing ActiveX Component Software Architecture For Enterprise Computing

Press Contact List

Tools

Applied Information Sciences Inc.

Borland International Inc.

Cognos Inc.

Compuware

DataFocus

Digital Equipment Corp.

Dynasty Technologies, John Zurawsk, (630) 769-8500

Forte Software Inc.

Intergraph Software Solutions Inc., Mike Paludan, (205) 730-3040

Microfocus

Powersoft Corp., Kathleen Quirk, (508) 287-1882

Rational Software Corp.

Seagate Software

SNI

SQA

Synon, Shawn Gathos, (415) 461-5000, ext. 1860

Texas Instruments Inc.

Usoft, Martin Gandar, 31-35-699-0864

Vision-Soft

Solutions

Camstar Systems Inc., Sandy Towle, (408) 559-5700

Catalyst International, Scott Rishel, (414) 362-6723

Csoft International

Clarify Inc.

DBSS

Dun & BradStreet Software, Naresh Nagarajan, (212) 227-4832, ext. 433

E-Stamp Corp., Greg Matz, (415) 703-0400, ext. 236, or Ken Tompkins, (415) 703-0400, ext. 223

ESRI

FastLane Technologies, Maggie Melerhorst, (613) 599-3600, ext. 4377

FLX

Fourth Shift, Laurie Dana, (510) 328-3415

Frontoffice Technologies, Rebecca Gelina, (206) 443-8004

Health Systems Technologies Inc.

Hyperion Software

ICL Retail Systems, Horace Clemmons, (919) 556-8241

Intellution Inc.

IntraActive Software Corp. Zor Gorlov, (201) 716-0384

Marcam Corp.

Object Automation

Oceania Inc.

Platinum Software

Prologic, Marlene Yip, (604) 278-6470

Rockwell Software Inc.

SAP AG

Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems AG, Jim Corbinor or Olaf Kaestner, (888) 272-4798

Sterling Commerce

Symix Systems Inc., Jorge L. Lopez, (614) 523-7249

Transportation Information Technologies (TransIT) L.L.C.

Wonderware Corp.

System and Internet Software

Alteer, Phil Huber, (714) 789-0500

AMS/AGENA Corp.

Applied Technical Systems Inc., Fred Wurden, (360) 478-2710

Attachmate Corp.

Amdahl Corp., Mary Luciano, (408) 746-6166

BMC

Broadbase Information Systems Inc., Bruce Armstrong, (415) 655-7204

CMS/Data

Computer Associates International Inc.

Gradient Technologies, Dan Chmielewski, (508) 24-9600, ext. 179

Harmonic Lightwaves, Jill Zabkar, (408) 496-0900

Infoseek Corp., Steve Grady, (408) 567-2930

Info Support, Rob Schut or Henk de Koning, 31-318-552020

McAfee Associates

MetaView

Mosaix, John Tarabini, (510) 337-2115

Netsoft

Network Imaging Corp.

PCSI

Persistence Software Inc.

Proginet Corp.

Querisoft, Amir Hudda, (404) 812-6272

SAS Institute Inc.

Scopus Technology Inc.

Software AG

Stratus

Systems and Synchronous Inc

Tandem Computers Inc.

Wall Data Inc.

Solution Developers

BEST Systems Inc., Dr. Nand Singh, (972) 233-6300

Clarity Consulting Inc., Craig Goren, (312) 634-6050, ext. 7101

Commercial Computer Services Inc., Bill Whiting, (507) 287-0001

Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group

Developmentor

The Digital Foundry Inc.

Dominion Tech

Graphical Technologies Corp., Rene Moreno, (312) 857-1166, ext. 20

Interactive Software Corp.

International Systems Group Inc, Max Dolgicer, (212) 489-0400, ext. 43

Micro Modeling Associates

Object Factory, Olaf Wikesland, +47-22-63-85-89

Panther Software, Steve Robinson, (310) 372-6806

Prolifics