REDMOND, Wash. - Jan. 28, 1998 - Microsoft Corp. today announced that the Microsoft^® Visual Basic^® development system version 5.0 - the world's most popular rapid application development tool for the Windows^® operating system - has set record license sales of over 1 million units since its introduction in March 1997. In addition, Visual Basic leads the way on usage in the academic field, as well as in the server and Web application development categories.

License Sales and Usage

Developers worldwide have licensed over 1 million copies of Visual Basic 5.0 since its launch in March 1997 - the equivalent of a copy of Visual Basic 5.0 licensed every 25 seconds. Over 200,000 of those units have been licensed through the Microsoft premier development suite, the Visual Studio™ 97 development system. In addition to the 1 million units licensed, hundreds of thousands of copies of Visual Basic 5.0 Control Creation Edition have been downloaded from the Web and included in Visual Basic books. License sales of Visual Basic 5.0 are 40 percent higher than license sales of Visual Basic 4.0 were in its first 10 months, with a 126 percent increase in the academic field alone (source: Microsoft).

Visual Basic is the most widely used development language in the world, with more than 3.2 million developers using the Visual Basic language. In the RAD tool category alone, 84 percent of developers use Visual Basic. When asked what tools they use most often, 55 percent of professional developers say they use the Visual Basic language as their key development language, compared to 19 percent of developers who primarily use C++ and 5 percent who use the Java language (source: Market Decisions Corp., November 1997).

Web and Server Development

In addition, according to the Market Decisions November 1997 survey, developers are choosing Visual Basic over other tools and languages to build the core processing components of their Web applications. Developers not only are building ActiveX™ Controls to display in Web pages, but also increasingly are using Visual Basic to build the server-side components that power the Web site behind the scenes, and tools like the Microsoft Visual InterDev™ Web development system to design and build the HTML portions of their site. According to research conducted by Hase/Schannen Research Associates, nearly half of developers who use Visual Basic 5.0 are using the tool to create components that run on a server.

"We chose Visual Basic because we needed a solution that would allow us to develop components which would support a wide variety of deployments, from desktop to file server to client/server to Web. Visual Basic allowed us to develop both server- and client-side components rapidly and in a totally integrated fashion," said Steve Feiner, director of engineering, Chrome Data Corp. "By using Visual Basic, we've attained maximum flexibility at a lower cost - and we can pass the same flexibility on to the customers who develop using our solutions. As such, we're not surprised to see that Visual Basic is one of the leading tools in the server and Web applications category."

Broad Third-Party Support

Components are everywhere, and opportunities within the controls and components market continue to expand. Currently there are over 6,000 ActiveX Controls available commercially. The Giga Information Group estimates that the market for ActiveX Controls and components will reach $670 million in 1998, and will quadruple by 2001. The market for server components is the fastest-growing segment of this industry. By 2001, Giga estimates, there will be a $1 billion market for ActiveX Server components.

Developers using Visual Basic are also reaping the benefits of the Microsoft Visual Basic Applications Edition licensing program. Because they now share the common programming language and environment of Visual Basic for Applications, applications from companies such as Autodesk Inc., Rockwell Software Inc., Visio Corp. and many others can be fully customized by the over 3 million developers using the Visual Basic language.

The Visual Basic family of products offers a range of choices for all developers, whether they're creating Web sites, selling controls or deploying mission-critical enterprise applications. The Visual Basic 5.0 family includes Visual Basic 5.0 Control Creation Edition, the easy way to create ActiveX Controls; Visual Basic for Applications 5.0, which provides scripting and automation of host applications and is currently shipping in 26 third-party applications including Microsoft Office 97; and the Visual Basic 5.0 Learning, Professional and Enterprise editions. For more information, visit the Visual Basic Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic/.

Award-Winning Product of Visual Studio

Visual Basic 5.0 is one of the award-winning products in Microsoft Visual Studio 97, which debuted in March 1997. Microsoft Visual Studio 97 is a complete development tools suite for enterprise development. Visual Studio 97 provides corporations with easy-to-use tools for

building business applications for the Windows NT^® Server operating system, including client/server, multitier and Web-based solutions. Visual Studio 97 Professional Edition features Visual Basic 5.0, the Visual C++^® 5.0 development system, the Visual J++™1.1 development system for Java, Visual InterDev 1.0 and the Visual FoxPro^® 5.0 database. Visual Studio 97 Enterprise Edition also includes enterprise and team development features such as the Microsoft Repository, the Visual SourceSafe™ version control system, Visual Modeler, Visual Database Tools, Visual Component Manager, and a development version of Microsoft SQL Server™ 6.5.

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, Visual Basic, Windows, Visual Studio, ActiveX, Visual InterDev, Windows NT, Visual C++, Visual J++, Visual FoxPro and Visual SourceSafe 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 trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information, press only:

Jeanette Estberg, Waggener Edstrom, (425) 637-9097, jestberg@wagged.com