REDMOND, Wash., and YOKNEAM, Israel — April 11, 2016 — On Monday, Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Visuality Systems Ltd. announced the expansion of their Server Message Block (SMB) collaboration from the embedded world to the enterprise market. This broad partnership will mean enhanced business solutions to more products worldwide.

Visuality Systems has broadened its NQ™ product family by releasing NQ™ Storage, bringing storage platform file-sharing capabilities to even more products and consumers through better interoperability between Windows and non-Windows machines.

“NQ™ Storage reflects 17 years of SMB development experience and is targeted to fill a missing void in the storage market,” said Tal Widerman, marketing manager of Visuality Systems Ltd. “Our joint efforts focus on providing storage developers with a commercial Microsoft interoperability solution stack.”

“The patent and business collaboration between Microsoft and Visuality Systems builds on an already strong partnership that will deliver enhanced business solutions across products for more consumers,” said Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing. “This relationship enables storage manufacturers to turn their storage system into network attached storage by the integration of Microsoft’s SMB protocol. We are glad to be working with Visuality Systems to maximize the SMB support efficiency in the storage market.”

Microsoft’s commitment to licensing IP

The patent agreement is another example of the important role intellectual property (IP) plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant technology ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, it has entered into more than 1,200 licensing agreements. More information about Microsoft’s licensing programs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing.

About Visuality Systems Ltd.

Visuality Systems, Ltd. is the leader in the provision of SMB-based solutions for a multitude of operating systems. Since its inception in 1998, Visuality Systems is fully dedicated to the development of SMB implementations.

About Microsoft Technology Licensing

Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC was formed in 2014 to acquire, manage and license Microsoft’s patent portfolio.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.