Today at the 57th Annual Quality Congress and Exposition (AQC), Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of the first public beta offering of Microsoft� Office Visio� 2003, its popular drawing and diagramming software. Available in Standard and Professional editions, Visio 2003 includes new diagram types, galleries and templates as well as the most common diagram types that support the principal quality control systems, Six Sigma, ISO 9000 and TQM. This will enable customers to easily document and analyze business processes, better understand how their organization operates, and increase efficiency. As part of the Microsoft Office System, new features and functionality in Visio 2003 also will enable customers to build powerful, connected solutions leveraging Microsoft .NET and XML Web services. With this release, Visio documents become smart clients that can be integrated with line-of-business applications and can be used to monitor business data in real time.

"The new features and enhancements in Microsoft Office Visio 2003 make it a comprehensive and essential diagramming tool for enterprise customers," said Joseph Eschbach, corporate vice president of the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft. "With Visio 2003, we're providing customers with a tool to visually navigate, understand and improve their business processes, ultimately helping them becoming more productive and efficient, and better able to respond to threats from competitors or to new-business opportunities."