Microsoft's First Visio Product Goes To Beta

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March 06, 2001 (4:40 AM EST)

Microsoft's First Visio Product Goes To Beta

Microsoft Corp. is releasing Tuesday a public beta of Visio 2002, a business diagramming and drawing software upgrade that represents the most comprehensive fruit to date of Microsoft's acquisition of Visio.

An edition of Visio 2000 was repackaged with a Microsoft logo and carried Microsoft product codes, but Visio 2002 is the first Microsoft-developed version of the software since the company's $1.4 billion acquisition of Visio Corp. in January 2000.

With the upgrade, scheduled for final release at the end of May, Microsoft (stock: MSFT) has streamlined the product line and closely integrated Visio 2002 with the Office productivity suite and other Microsoft products, said Elise Jones, Microsoft Visio product manager.

Instead of four product SKUs, the developer will ship a Standard edition for business diagrams and a Professional edition for business and technical professionals.

A Microsoft Visio Enterprise Network Tools version is also planned as an add-on to Visio Professional. That edition will contain tools for auto-diagramming networks, Active Directory, NDS, and LDAP directory formats. Technical users can also access a new Visio Network Center, an online resource containing 25,000 Visio Network shapes, and additional documentation.

Both Visio Standard and Visio Professional 2002 will sport enhanced graphical quality with smoother lines and text, more vibrant color, and clearer displays when viewed electronically, Jones said.

The upgrade has solved at least one major issue for longtime Visio user and beta tester John Rymer, founder and principal analyst at business strategy firm Upstream Consulting, Emeryville, Calif.

"The biggest issue I've had with the product for some time has been it was hard to use with other Office applications. Visio has great drawing tools, but you had to cut and paste into PowerPoint," Rymer said. "This really is finally integrated well, finally. It's a natural integration."

Fluke Networks, Everett, Wash., makes a product called LAN MapShot, which quickly maps computer networks and works in tandem with Visio. LAN MapShot developers chose Visio because of the breadth of the developer tools it offered, said Lisa Schwartz, LAN MapShot product manager.

"Visio is a quality product. It really helped us with time-to-market and speed of development," Schwartz said. Still, she saw Microsoft's acquisition of Visio as a positive for Visio's products.

Since the buy-out, Visio's customer base has grown by some 1 million users, said Curtis Lee, product manager Microsoft Business Tools Division. "Part of the increase in customers has come from being part of Microsoft licensing programs," Lee said "We've really leveraged Microsoft's channel," he said.

With its first release of Visio 1.0 in November 1992, Visio pioneered software for plotting flow charts, organizational charts, Gantt charts, workflow and data diagrams, and other technical drawings.

The Visio 2002 beta is available at https://microsoft.order-1.com/visiobeta.