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The Drumbeat 2000 & Macromedia Saga
  Subject: Response to Macromedia's Open Letter
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 14:13:45 -0400
From: Rick Curtis
Newsgroups: macromedia.ultradev, macromedia.drumbeat, macromedia.drumbeat.ecommerce




Response to an Open Letter from Macromedia
4/27/00 - Posted to macromedia.drumbeat, macromedia.drumbeat.ecommerce,
macromedia.ultradev

Beth, I appreciate your recent response and follow-up to my letter and
our two phone conversations. You have faithfully addressed a number of
the points that I raised regarding Drumbeat and UltraDev. Your laying
out of upcoming resources on UltraDev and a timeline for release of
future information, as well as the upgrade price should be extremely
helpful for Drumbeat users. As we discussed the other day, the Web page
has been revised to reflect accurate information about plans for
Drumbeat and the fact that Macromedia has no plans for Windows 2000
compatibility. I am certain that I speak for many Drumbeat users who
welcome this refreshing sharing of information.

Windows 2000 Compatibility

Given this demonstration of commitment to supporting Drumbeat customers,
I am sure that you will be interested to know that Unify Corporation has
pledged to provide Windows 2000 support for the OEM versions of Drumbeat
(VISION Studio) which they have licensed from Macromedia. I have
confirmed this with two different individuals at Unify and include this
information below, one an email message and the other a phone call. 

Subject: RE: Unify VISION 6 & VISION Studio - New from Unify!
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 09:30:26 -0700
From: David Lowe
Organization: Unify

Hi, Rick.

Unify VISION Studio is not currently certified to run on Windows 2000.
Our
development team is in the progress of determining a release date. We'll
post to this list when the product is available for Windows 2000.

Thank you for your interest!
_________________________
DAVID A. LOWE
Unify (Nasdaq: UNFY)
Director, Market Development
T - 916.928.6307 E-

Phone Call Message 4/26/2000: "This is Derek Irving with Unify getting
back to you on your question about Windows 2000 and our VISION Studio
Product. Just wanted to let you know that I did confirm with our
development group that Windows 2000 is a strategic platform for us and
in the next few months we will come out with Unify VISION certified on
Windows 2000. It is definitely a product that is important to us in the
future and you can be looking for that in the next few months."

As you mentioned in our phone conversation and in your letter,
Macromedia determined that the best market strategy for product
development was to allocate its programming resources to UltraDev rather
than fixing Drumbeat. Given Unify's very different market strategy, they
have determined that Windows 2000 compatibility is essential to their
market success. I am sure that given Macromedia's licensing arrangement
with Unify that it will be entirely possible for Macromedia to acquire
the Windows 2000 patch and provide this free for current Drumbeat
customers. This provides a real solution to unfortunate situation for
many Drumbeat developers that has been created by Macromedia's shift in
architecture. It also creates a win-win situation for all of us.
UltraDev will be released as the next generation tool for Web database
development and current Drumbeat users are provided with a secure
transition for the many Drumbeat sites that they have developed. This
will provide us with the extended period many of us will require to
slowly port our Web sites over to UltraDev. 

I and other Drumbeat users look forward to hearing from you about this
new development for Drumbeat.

-- 
Rick Curtis