REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of four Gartner Magic Quadrants: the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects, the Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for SOA Composite Application Projects, the Magic Quadrant for New Systematic Service-Oriented Business Application Projects and the Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems.

"We believe that these reports validate the depth of our offering in these spaces. In our opinion, Microsoft's position in these Magic Quadrants shows that we are delivering a leading-edge platform for service orientation and integration. We think the results and customer adoption speak for themselves," said Steven Martin, senior director of Developer Platform Product Management at Microsoft. "Customers are leveraging the strong technical performance and low cost of ownership of the Microsoft Application Platform, and are seeing immediate business results. Factor in the flexibility and choice we are now offering with our software-plus-services strategy, and we are providing a truly differentiated set of solutions."

This week's Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference will showcase customers that are seeing notable results today using real-world service- oriented architecture (SOA), leveraging the Microsoft Application Platform for mission-critical areas of the business. The Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference helps customers achieve real-world SOA by providing thoughtful approaches to customers and partners in all stages of service-oriented development.

According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Integration Projects, "Leaders are vendors with a proven and comprehensive integrated product set, as well as a sizeable installed base of reasonably satisfied clients that extends internationally. They have an ample installed base of products to cross-sell their integration solutions to, and have demonstrated their ability to anticipate technology and market trends over the years by extending their offerings with composite, application- enabling technology. Leaders manifest their understanding of the problem space by providing innovative features, and by extending their integration technology to support initiatives, such as SOA and BPM." The Magic Quadrant, an esteemed evaluative model established by Gartner Inc., positions vendors according to their ability to execute and completeness of vision across current and future technologies.

Microsoft is committed to long-term innovation for both software and services. Today, customers have access to a proven platform with Windows Server, the Microsoft .NET Framework, Visual Studio, BizTalk Server and SQL Server. Together, these integrated technologies and tools help organizations extend the value in existing investments and rapidly develop new solutions for important initiatives such as application life-cycle management, business intelligence, data warehousing, SOA and interoperability.

Windows Server 2008 is the most advanced Windows Server operating system yet, designed to power the next generation of networks, applications and Web services. With more than 8,200 customers globally, BizTalk Server delivers enterprise connectivity for the Microsoft Application Platform across applications and systems both inside and across organizations, and is the most widely deployed solution on the market today. The Visual Studio development system is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to help software developers create innovative, next-generation applications. SQL Server 2008 is a database management and business intelligence platform that helps your organization to manage and access any data, anyplace, anytime. SQL Server 2008 provides high levels of security, reliability and scalability for business-critical applications.

Future innovations such as the Azure Services Platform and "Oslo" advance next-generation development concepts including the cloud, Web and modeling. With a host of community technology previews (CTPs) and other resources first made available at the Professional Developers Conference in October 2008, developers can begin testing and learning more.

More information on the Microsoft Application Platform can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/applicationplatform.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted December 19, 2008 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.