Merant announced its status as a premier partner in Microsoft’s enhanced Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program. By integrating its enterprise change management product line with Visual Studio .NET 2003, Merant enables developers to leverage the common user interface to automate and control development processes and asset change practices. The program is designed to help vendors more easily integrate their products with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003. By incorporating the versioning, configuration management and issue management capabilities of its products into Visual Studio .NET 2003, Merant boosts the capabilities of developers. Merant’s support for VSIP will help ensure that Merant’s products will be tightly integrated with Visual Studio .NET as Microsoft evolves the product. Merant will soon introduce a new version of Dimensions, which will feature even tighter integration with Visual Studio .NET 2003 as well as support for Microsoft SQL Server 2000. www.merant.com