ESRI Licenses Visual Basic for Applications Edition 6.0; VBA Will Ship With Next Generation ESRI Software.

REDLANDS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 1999--ESRI Thursday announced that it has licensed the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Edition 6.0 programming system for inclusion in ESRI's next generation of geographic information system (GIS) software.

VBA is an industry-standard programming environment used by more than three million developers worldwide.

"With its next generation software, ESRI is developing products that are truly open component object model, and VBA will allow easy customization of these new systems," said Jack Dangermond, ESRI president. "Users will be able to take advantage of their training in and knowledge of Visual Basic to fully customize, extend, and integrate ESRI applications with VBA."

VBA is the edition of Visual Basic designed specifically to provide rich development capabilities inside an off-the-shelf application. VBA provides all the development tools required to build solutions that incorporate application customization and solution integration.

ESRI is the world's leading developer of GIS software. Once considered a niche market, GIS is now widely used for a broad number of applications and is often integrated with other applications. Inclusion of VBA in ESRI's next generation software will make GIS even more accessible, easy to use, and easy to integrate with other information solutions.

For more than 30 years, ESRI has been the leading developer of GIS software with more than 220,000 clients worldwide. ESRI also provides consulting, implementation, and technical support services.

In addition to its headquarters in California, ESRI has regional offices throughout the United States, international distributors in more than 90 countries, and more than 700 resellers and developers. ESRI's goal is to provide users with comprehensive tools to help them quickly and efficiently manage and use geographic information to make a real difference in the world around them.

ESRI can be found on the Web at www.esri.com.

ESRI is a trademark of Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., registered in the United States and certain other countries; registration is pending in the European Community. The ESRI globe logo and GIS by ESRI are trademarks and www.esri.com and @esri.com are service marks of Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. Other companies and products mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.