Microsoft Web Services Gains Momentum With Visual Studio .Net Launch

Visual Studio .Net, the application development tool for Microsoft Web services, and the .Net Framework, the platform for Web services applications, were introduced by Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates, who called the products two of the most important releases in the history of the company. He also highlighted that Visual Studio .Net was named a VARBusiness Editor's Choice product of the year

The .Net strategy, which was announced nearly four years ago, was designed to bring Microsoft software to the Internet through Web services. The software giant is banking on XML-based Web services to provide its business customers with a new way use the Internet as a development platform and to enable businesses to communicate and interoperate across disparate systems and platforms.

Microsoft .Net supports for more than 20 programming languages and a host of current Microsoft applications and middleware. In addition, the company also released new Web services toolkits for BizTalk Server 2002 and SQL Server 2000 for integrating with Visual Studio .Net. Microsoft also offers a developer kit for Microsoft Exchange Server. Eric Swift, lead product manager for BizTalk Server, says .Net will bring Microsoft products such as BizTalk to a new audience and allow customers the freedom to build Web services around them.

"This is a classic example of Microsoft being as unproprietary as possible," Swift says.

Analyst firm Summit Strategies says Microsoft has taken the lead in Web services by proving much-needed tools to help developers deploy Web services.

"Microsoft is addressing this need under the banner of its .Net initiative and is in the lead by nearing the releases of its Web service-centric toolset, Visual Studio .Net," wrote Dwight Davis, vice president at Summit.

Davis adds that Microsoft faces heavy competition from the Java community and rivals such as Sun Microsystems, which are rushing to market with tools and platforms for Java-based Web services. Giga Information Group recently reported that Web services would become mainstream by 2003 and that according to its research, Java 2 Enterprise Edition solutions are viewed as the most important Web services platforms. However, Giga also says that .Net gives developers a greater certainty because it's controlled by a single company rather than a community of Java developers and consensus opinion.

To bring more structure to the .Net Web services strategy, Microsoft helped create the Web Services Interoperability Organization last week along with IBM, which has its own Web services strategy. In addition, Microsoft announced a new .Net international user group association was announced earlier in the week with the creation of the International .Net Association (INETA) of User Groups. As a charter sponsor of INETA, Microsoft will provide training support for the INETA Speakers' Bureau in providing content to its members.

Microsoft says more than 3.5 million copies of Visual Studio .NET and the .Net Framework were distributed during beta testing and that 250,000 developers have received training through more than 200 courses on .Net. The company also announced that software vendors such as IBM, Computer Associates and Macromedia will provide integrated development tools for Visual Studio .Net and the .Net Framework.