AmberPoint to Deliver Tools for Managing Web Services in Microsoft Visual Studio “Whidbey”

Los Angeles, Calif. – October 28, 2003 At the Microsoft PDC 2003 – , October 28, 2003 -- AmberPoint, a leading provider of Web services management solutions, today announced that a customized version of AmberPoint management software will be distributed with the next commercial release of Microsoft Visual Studio, code-named “Whidbey.” This combination of Microsoft’s industry-leading Web services development tool and a developer’s version of AmberPoint’s monitoring and management capabilities will enable developers to quickly and cost-effectively build, validate and deploy Web services that are ready for business-critical use. AmberPoint Express, a special edition of AmberPoint’s enterprise-class Web services management software, provides real-time insight into the performance of Web services to aid developers in readying their applications for deployment.

“AmberPoint Express provides monitoring and management capabilities that developers require on their desktops as they complete their development cycles and take their Web services into production on the .NET Framework,” said Rick LaPlante, general manager of Enterprise Tools at Microsoft. “By delivering these capabilities with Visual Studio ‘Whidbey,’ we are providing our customers with the tools they need to build manageable business-critical Web services.”

“We see this combination as an important step for continuing the corporate adoption of Web services,” said Peter Gandy, head of Web services at British Telecommunications PLC . “Management is a key issue for Web services. Failure to address it can generate unnecessary cost in creating and operating Web service systems. Having a developer-oriented management product delivered with a leading development tool ensures that management is addressed in the right way, and at the right stage of a project.”

Customer Benefits
AmberPoint Express brings significant benefits to developers building business-critical Web services on the Microsoft .NET Framework, including:

• Provides real-time insight into the performance and behavior of Web services in test environments, enabling fine-tuning before deployment


• Provides a rich set of tools, tightly integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio “Whidbey”


• Improves the speed, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of preparing Web services for production

“The management challenges of Web services begin at the tail end of the development process,” said Daryl Plummer, group vice president and Chief Gartner Fellow at Gartner. “An approach that combines development with the initial stages of management should streamline the transition of Web services into production environments.”

“Distributing AmberPoint Express with Microsoft Visual Studio “Whidbey” gives the developer building on the .NET Framework an easy means of understanding the performance and management characteristics of Web service-based applications” said John Hubinger, AmberPoint CEO. “Microsoft is committed to meeting its customers’ needs, and AmberPoint is committed to providing integrated solutions with Microsoft .NET technologies.”

Availability
An early access version of AmberPoint Express that works with current versions of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is provided free to all attendees at the 2003 Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles. AmberPoint Express will also be demoed at the Microsoft PDC Conference session, “Visual Studio Whidbey: Designing Solutions with Enterprise Modeling Tools.” Users of AmberPoint Express will be able to easily upgrade to editions of AmberPoint with advanced features for managing more complex, distributed Web services-based systems.

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Press Contacts:

Bob Dever
AmberPoint, Inc.
510.433.6553
bdever@amberpoint.com

Kim Abreu
Atomic Public Relations
415.553.4305
kim@atomicpr.com