Dassault Systemes Integrates Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications to Enhance the Customization of Its Industry-leading Solutions

Business Wire, Oct 25, 2000

Business & High-Tech Editors

SURESNES, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 25, 2000

Dassault Systemes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Bourse de Paris) announced today to the manufacturing industry that it will integrate Microsoft(R) Visual Basic(R) for Applications (VBA) into its product lines (SolidWorks, SmarTeam, CATIA, ENOVIA, DELMIA).

Dassault Systemes will integrate VBA into future product versions to provide a more robust development environment to Windows(R) users, increasing the customization and programmability of its solutions.

The use of VBA as a component of Dassault Systemes' Rapid Application Development architecture will allow customers, developers and partners to take advantage of the increased integration with the Microsoft Windows(R) operating system, to add their own customized user interfaces and to develop custom functionalities connected with other VBA-enabled applications.

The new VBA features will allow developers to take advantage of a sophisticated set of programming tools to reinforce and extend the power of Dassault Systemes' industry-leading solutions. As a result of this integration the entire Dassault Systemes product portfolio and other VBA-enabled applications will interoperate in a secure and flexible standard development environment. This enables Dassault Systemes solutions users to immediately benefit from lower development costs, better adaptability to change and reduced time-to-market for their solutions.

"Embedding Visual Basic for Applications into our solutions perfectly fits with our Open Architecture strategy and confirms our joint efforts with Microsoft to provide customers with a large range of development tools in our digital manufacturing solutions," said Michael I. Payne, Executive Vice President of Technology, Dassault Systemes. "Customers will be able to take advantage of VBA by extending and connecting our solutions to other tools provided in the Microsoft environment."

"We are delighted that Dassault Systemes is integrating VBA into its product lines to bring a higher degree of customization and functionality to its solutions," said Chris Atkinson, Vice President, .NET Developer Solutions Group, Microsoft Corporation. "With VBA, Dassault Systemes can connect with other VBA-enabled applications to create entire line-of-business solutions."

Visual Basic for Applications is the premier development technology for rapidly customizing packaged applications and integrating them with existing data and systems. VBA offers a sophisticated set of programming tools based on Microsoft Visual Basic, the world's most popular rapid application development system, that developers can use to harness the power of packaged applications. VBA enables companies to buy off-the-shelf software and customize it to meet their specific business rather than building from scratch. This saves time and money, reduces risks, leverages programmer skills, and delivers precisely what users need.

Dassault Systemes is the premier global software developer of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, providing companies with e-business solutions to implement their digital enterprise, thus creating and simulating the entire product lifecycle from initial concept to product in service. CATIA, DELMIA and ENOVIA solutions support industry-specific business processes to help unleash creativity and innovation, reduce development cycle time, improve quality, competitiveness and shareholder value: CATIA supports the digital product definition and simulation, DELMIA provides solutions to define and simulate lean digital manufacturing processes and ENOVIA delivers enterprise solutions that manage a comprehensive, collaborative and distributed model of the digital product, processes and resources. The combined integration creates the Digital Product lifecycle Pipeline, supporting reuse of corporate knowledge. SolidWorks and Smart Solutions, as Dassault Systemes companies, offer respectively 3D design-centric and TeamPDM software solutions based on Windows.

Information about VBA is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vba or http://www.microsoft.com/europe/msdn/vba

Information about Dassault Systemes is available at http://www.dsweb.com

Microsoft(R) Visual Basic for Applications(R) and Windows(R) NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

CATIA(R) is registered in the US Patent and Trade Mark Office by Dassault Systemes.

DELMIA(TM) is owned by Dassault Systemes

ENOVIA(TM)is owned by Dassault Systemes

SMARTEAM(R) is registered in the US Patent and Trade Mark Office by Smart Solutions Ltd

SOLIDWORKS(R) is registered in the US Patent and Trade Mark Office by SolidWorks

All other company product or service names mentioned may be trademarks or service marks of others.