Vista, Office and the 20th anniversary as a publicly traded company

Nov 30, 2006 10:35 GMT  ·  By

Today, the ringing bell opening the NASDAQ market in New York is synonymous with a Microsoft's New Day for Business. In fact, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer will be the one to ring the bell and open the NASDAQ market.

Today, the Redmond Company celebrates the release of its latest operating system for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. "While the new IT and end-user features of these products get a lot of attention, there's also a lot going on with the underlying platform that creates new opportunities for developers and ISVs to build applications and grow their businesses on the Microsoft platform. The release of Windows Vista is really critical to extending the capabilities of Web-based applications due to breakthrough innovation to the underlying infrastructure in the .NET Framework.

On the Office front, there's a lot of excitement around the new platform capabilities in the 2007 Office system which is, in a lot of ways, a culmination of our "Office as a platform" vision. And Exchange Server 2007 is raising the bar in terms of how Web services are being used for more sophisticated message sharing, delivery and management," explained Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice president with Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism Group.

But November 30 is a more significant date for Microsoft. In addition to officially launching its flagship products, the Redmond Company is also celebrating the 20th anniversary as a publicly traded company.

"Any time there's a major release of Windows it's significant because it raises the floor for the whole industry. For example, Windows 95 provided a standard TCP/IP stack which was a critical enabler of the Internet revolution. With Windows Vista, the .NET Framework 3.0 brings a rich set of platform enablers that span the Web services architecture, enhance user experience, and improve business process. Already we are seeing great innovation on the .NET Framework 3.0," added Parthasarathy.