Positioned in Gartner's 2005 Magic Quadrant for Web Services Platforms; report evaluated vendors in both the ability to execute and vision categories.

Microsoft Corp., recently announced that it has been positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner Inc.'s 2005 Magic Quadrant for Web Services Platforms.

The report, published by Gartner was developed to assist enterprises with the vendor selection process for Web services platform direction and influence, and evaluated 13 companies as part of its research. Companies were evaluated based on their vision and ability to execute in the following areas: Web services platform elements and breadth of offerings; Web services standards leadership; and Web services platform ecosystem and developer influence. Gartner uses questionnaires, analyst briefings and customer interviews to determine a company's position in the quadrant.

"Microsoft's Web services platform helps businesses worldwide connect people, processes and information through software," said Ari Bixhorn, director of Web Services Strategy at Microsoft. "With our ongoing commitment to industry standards and new Web services offerings including 'Indigo', the code name for Microsoft's next generation of Web services technology, Microsoft provides a comprehensive solution for organizations to integrate heterogeneous IT investments more securely and reliably."

The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner.