Mainsoft Showcases Visual Studio for Linux Program at Tech Ed
Freely Available Visual MainWin for J2EE Developer Edition and Enterprise
Product Suite Link Visual Studio Development to Linux, J2EE Server Deployments
Tech Ed, Amsterdam - July 5, 2005 - Mainsoft®
Corporation, the cross-platform development company, today unveiled Visual
MainWin®
for J2EE™
Developer Edition in Europe. Referred to as Grasshopper, the freely available
Visual Studio .NET®
plug-in enables Visual Studio developers to quickly develop Web applications
for Linux®
. Technical articles and community forums are available at no charge to
developers who register at http://dev.mainsoft.com
.
Mainsoft's Developer Edition complements its Visual
MainWin enterprise product suite, which enables software vendors such as ESRI,
FormScape, Infogate Online and IBM Rational to write enterprise-class
applications using the productive Visual Studio®
development environment and deploy applications on multiple platforms,
including Linux.
Grasshopper is the result of Mainsoft's two-year
collaboration with Mono™, an open
source development community that is developing an open source version of the
Microsoft®
.NET development platform. With Grasshopper, Visual Studio .NET developers can
contribute enhancements, class libraries and fixes to Grasshopper's and Mono's
shared open source runtime.
Visual Studio Developers, ISVs In Search of Linux
According to a recent study by Evans Data Corporation, more than a quarter of
European developers that use Visual Studio .NET as their primary development
environment have written an application for Linux, and more than one-third are
likely to write a Linux application next year. The study also indicates that
two-thirds of the Visual Studio .NET developers surveyed have used open source
components in their application development.
"Many ISVs use the high productivity of Visual Studio to quickly bring
commercial applications to market, and then pay a steadily increasing price
because they offer Windows-only deployments," said Yaacov Cohen, president and
CEO of Mainsoft. "We're seeing market leaders turn to Mainsoft to deliver the
best of both worlds: the high productivity of Visual Studio and cross-platform
deployment on J2EE servers as well as Windows and Linux."
Earlier this year, Mainsoft's Visual MainWin
technology enabled FormScape, a global provider of Document Process Automation™
solutions, to deliver its Covus and FormScape software, comprised of 2.5+
million lines of C++ code, on Linux, Solaris and AIX in less than eight months.
"With Visual MainWin, we can focus most of our development efforts on product
enhancements and feel confident we will deploy high-quality products on time
and on budget," said Darren Atkinson, Chief Technology Officer of UK-founded
FormScape Software.
In addition, ESRI, a global leader in geographic information systems, ported
its ArcGIS 9 server and developer software products from a Windows-based
operating system to Linux. "Without the help of Visual MainWin, ESRI's
development effort in moving our products to Linux would have been much larger,
too large to even calculate," said Rich Turner, ArcGIS product manager.
"Basically, we would have had to significantly increase our engineering staff
to do the development. The cost would have been significant, and we wouldn't
have been able to get the product to market in time to drive new
opportunities."
Infogate Online, a middleware solutions provider for IPTV based in Tel Aviv,
Israel, used Visual MainWin to port 500,000 lines of C# code to Linux in just
90 days.
About Grasshopper
Grasshopper is the first Visual Studio-based IDE for Linux. It enables
individual developers to develop, debug and deploy Web applications and Web
services for Windows, Linux and any Java-enabled platform using Visual Studio
software, C# and Visual Basic .NET. Grasshopper is designed for individual
developers and for small user group deployments. Access to enterprise features
such as multi-CPU capabilities and fully-featured J2EE servers, including
WebSphere®, JBoss®
and WebLogic®
, are available in the Visual MainWin for J2EE Enterprise Edition.
Mainsoft has also launched a Linux Zone for Visual Studio developers, populated
with how-to articles and interactive forums that make application development
for Linux and Java-enabled platforms faster and easier for Visual Studio
developers.
Visual Studio Developers and Mono
"Mainsoft is a trusted partner and significant contributor to the Mono
community," said Miguel de Icaza, Mono's project leader. "Their years of
experience working with Microsoft developers, and their many contributions to
our open source .NET Framework, are helping us pursue our shared goal of
promoting cross-platform Linux development, much faster than was possible."
Grasshopper exposes Mono's open source ASP.NET and
ADO.NET class libraries to the Visual Studio developer. For the first time,
.NET developers can use Visual Studio software to add class libraries, bug
fixes and enhancements to the open source runtime. These enhancements will be
incorporated into both the Mono project and Visual MainWin for J2EE.
Mainsoft's engineering team has worked with Mono for the past two years,
contributing to the ongoing development and testing of Mono's ASP.NET, ADO.NET,
XML, Visual Basic and .NET core class libraries. Grasshopper is a significant
"leap" forward in Mainsoft's and Mono's shared objective, to make it easier for
.NET developers to write applications for Linux.
About Mainsoft Corporation
Founded in 1993, Mainsoft Corporation, the cross-platform development company,
enables businesses to develop mission-critical applications with Visual Studio
software and deploy them natively on J2EE, UNIX and Linux platforms,
dramatically reducing development costs and time-to-market. The company is a
first-mover in cross-platform development. Its world-class research and
development team has created patented cross-platform products that solve
critical problems facing independent software vendors (ISVs) and IT
organizations. Many of the world's largest ISVs including Siebel, Computer
Associates and IBM Rational, use Mainsoft's products to extend the productivity
of Microsoft Visual Studio, deploying more than $1 billion worth of software
annually on multiple operating systems. For more information, visit
www.mainsoft.com
.
All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong
to their respective companies.
Press Contact:
Jenna Dobkin
Director of Marketing
Mainsoft Corporation
Ph: (415) 652-2185
jennad@mainsoft.com
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