Only Handful Of Top Business ISVs Ship Vista Apps

• 90 Degrees Software, Vancouver, B.C., whose Radius for Windows Vista business intelligence reporting tool was certified for Vista in early January. It is one of the first applications that exploits the .NET Framework 3.0 of Vista and harnesses its high-end graphics to deliver a visually rich BI reporting tool and its and peer-to-peer capabilities to better enable collaboration among colleagues.

Radius also sports a user interface similar that mimics and integrates well with the Office 2007 ribbon-like interface and adds value to Microsoft's PerformancePoint BI tool. Company executives opted to be among the first ISVs out of the gate with a certified Vista application to capitalize on the attention paid to the Vista and Office 2007 launch in late January.

"If we waited a year or so to get certified, you'd get lost in the noise," said Roger Sanbrorn, CTO of 90 Degree Software, which has a channel program.

• SourceCode Technology Holdings, Redmond, Wash., whose soon-to-be-released K2.NET Enterprise Workflow Platform for Vista, code-named Black Pearl, is expected to be released this summer, company executives said.

The "Black Pearl" business process management platform harnesses the key building blocks of Vista, including its workflow, communications and graphics foundations to streamline business processes. The .NET Framework 3.0-based application simplifies the coding process of building business processes, such as workflow routing, by offering a series of templates and wizards and integrates tightly with Office 2007.

SourceCode, which worked closely with Microsoft on the development of Vista and Office 2007, in early 2007 launched a revised global partner program that creates a new alliance level and strips out the multitiered, structured and onerous requirements of the past program. The new program also offers new training and support services for partners, executives said.

• Attachmate EXTRA! X-treme Version 9 was the first business application to be Certified for Vista. The terminal emulation solution for connecting Vista users to IBM zSeries, iSeries and UNIX systems was announced last fall. The Seattle-based company plans to ship this spring another Certified for Vista application called Reflection 2007 that will be tightly integrated with Vista and Office 2007, executives said.

• Electric Rain's upcoming multimedia creation and editing tool, StandOut, allows businesses to create visually rich and cinematic slide-show presentations using the .NET Framework 3.0 in Vista. The application, which has a designer edition and presenter edition, is slated to be available for Vista in the second quarter. StandOut was announced on Jan. 30. The application, however, is sold directly through the Boulder, Colo., company.

Stacy Cowley contributed to this story