Press Release

iRise Joins Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner Program

Enterprise-ready visualization to be combined with leading collaborative development platform to accelerate delivery of Microsoft-based business applications

El Segundo, Calif. – March 9, 2009 – iRise®, a leading visualization solutions company, announced today they have joined the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program, as a coordinated effort to help accelerate delivery and lower the cost of developing Microsoft-based business applications.  The iRise visualization and collaboration platform, in conjunction with the ALM offering from Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, helps deliver a powerful application definition and development solution to Microsoft customers designed to reduce cost overruns, project delays and missing features in new Microsoft .NET-based software. With more than 200 partners, the VSIP program provides technical and marketing support to partners who have integrated their products with Visual Studio.

“We believe Microsoft’s rapidly growing customer base using its ALM solution confirms and underscores the need for team-based collaboration and process discipline,” stated Maurice Martin, president, COO and founder of iRise.  “Joining forces with Microsoft offers an enormous opportunity to the thousands of Visual Studio customers already in place to adopt visualization as a proven strategy to build the right software – the first time.”

“Microsoft is pleased to have iRise join the VSIP program and add a distinctive capability to the portfolio of solutions available to Visual Studio customers,” said Joe Marini, director, platform & tools ecosystem at Microsoft Corp. “Combining iRise with Visual Studio Team System will help our customers deliver with greater precision and less cost.”

Software Visualization – The Ultimate Change Agent
The world’s best run companies recognize that tough economies are exactly the right time to take bold steps to change the status quo and leap ahead of the competition. Consistently delivering innovative and highly usable business-critical applications is often the key to capitalizing on this kind of market opportunity.  iRise visualization gives companies a powerful way to define applications right – the first time.  By enabling global organizations to “test drive” and fully experience systems early in the process, iRise is an essential strategy to consolidate application portfolios, accelerate delivery and leverage global sourcing without delays and cost overruns.

With thousands of projects completed successfully, the value of visualization has proven to be enormous for businesses in highly competitive markets:

• Get to market twice as fast;
• Eliminate 30% of project cost;
• Ensure success of global sourcing strategies; and,
• Dramatically improve customer experience

About iRise
iRise is the world’s leading provider of visualization software for business applications.    Visualization is quickly becoming a critical competitive advantage for businesses to more effectively communicate their needs to technology teams and give everyone involved the ability to fully experience applications before they are built.  Companies of all sizes like General Motors, UPS, Wachovia, Manpower, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and many others use iRise to “test drive” their applications before building, which accelerates time to revenue, improves customer experience, and drives costs down.  At iRise, our vision is that by 2020, all business software will be visualized before being built, the same way that every car, airplane, and building is visualized today.  Headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., iRise is backed by Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, and has sales offices across North America.

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iRise is a registered trademark of iRise.  All other companies and products mentioned are trademarks and property of their respective owners.