28 September, 2006
Forestry Software Company Gets Microsoft Accreditation
The forestry industry looks set to have better technology at its fingertips with the announcement that ATLAS Technology
has become a Microsoft Certified Partner.
ATLAS Technology is a leading provider of forestry software in New Zealand. The company, a commercial business unit of
New Zealand Crown Research Institute, Scion, develops software tools that are applicable for all levels of forestry
management.
ATLAS Manager, Sarah Heine, says becoming a Microsoft partner represents ATLAS' commitment to developing all its
software in Microsoft .Net.
"In the past we've developed technologies using a variety of development tools, but this led to increased complexity and
slowed development. We are now going to standardise on .Net."
Standardising the software will make development, testing and maintenance more streamlined – enabling ATLAS to produce
state-of-the-art forestry software.
"Everything will be more standardised – we'll be developing in Microsoft .Net and integrating with Microsoft operation
systems, applications and databases. The tools are leading edge and industry standard, which is a big advantage in
reducing time-to-market and also in ongoing maintenance of existing products.
"The accreditation means we have access to a much wider variety of Microsoft software and technical support. That means
we can not only undertake more proactive testing, but can more easily solve compatibility issues and provide better
services to our clients."
To become a Microsoft Certified Partner, ATLAS submitted its ATLAS Forecaster application to a testing agency and
provided customer testimonials on the product to confirm its value to their business.
The ATLAS Technology team includes technical software engineers, software testers, helpdesk and client support. Software
is produced for managing forestry and includes modules on everything from collecting plot data, to scheduling planting
and forecasting yields.
The company's suite of software runs on Microsoft Windows and can be integrated with GIS, MS Office products and other
applications.
ENDS