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Visio 2003 Hits Beta Phase

Microsoft released the first public beta this week of its Microsoft Office Visio 2003 business drawing and diagramming software.

The tool is available in Standard and Professional editions and is expected to be generally available this summer.

New features include additional diagram types supporting Six Sigma, ISO 9000 and TQM; new support for Microsoft .NET and XML; and the ability to use Visio documents as smart clients.

A focus of the new release is to position Visio 2003 as a business process management tool. According to Microsoft, companies will be able to use business process diagrams, templates and tools to document, plan or improve business processes.

The other Microsoft products that Visio 2003 has been designed to integrate most tightly with are Windows Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services, BizTalk Server and SQL Server.

Pricing details have not been released.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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