Microsoft Windows® 95 Launch website

Client Objective: Microsoft wanted to create excitement online about the release of its Windows® 95 operating system, as well as provide customers around the world with information about the product. The Windows® 95 website had to tie-in to the live launch events, which took place on August 24, 1995 at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington (the website was launched on the same day).

vivid Implementation: Because this launch was one of the most highly visible software roll-outs in history, vivid had to create a site that could handle heavy traffic and provide information and entertainment to a vast and diverse audience. vivid built an extensive site that conveyed the feel of the on-campus launch activities by presenting real-time audio and video (as well as text transcripts) of speeches by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and comedian Jay Leno, as well as Microsoft officials and members of the development team. Photographs and text descriptions allowed site visitors to tour the many product tents erected on the campus (each featuring a category of third-party products or demonstrations of how Windows® 95 could be used for home, office, and mobile computing).

vivid also designed and administered the game "Bethany, TX" for the launch event.

In preparation for the site launch, vivid created a staging area where more than 300 Microsoft partners contributed information about their products. The engine vivid developed offered a forms-based front end to an HTML generator; partners could input their own text and graphics on a form, review the resulting webpages, and edit them up until the launch date, all without ever having to write any code.

To handle the heavy demands of the site, vivid constructed the backbone, configuring 11 high-end servers and shipping them to locations throughout the U.S. and Europe. vivid continued to maintain and update the servers once they were on site.

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