“While it was important that Microsoft Corp. impress financial
analysts and press with its recently outlined .Net platform, it is
crucial that it obtain developer acceptance for its
software-as-a-service vision. This week’s annual Microsoft
Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Orlando, Fla., will be
Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) true proving ground. If developers
fail to buy into Microsoft’s next-generation vision, the company’s
plan to yet again reinvent itself around the Internet will fall
flat.”
“This week, Microsoft will aim to provide the nitty-gritty
details of the technologies that will enable .Net to make
programming for the Web as easy as, if not easier than, programming
non-Webified applications. Over the past couple of weeks, Microsoft
took the wraps off some of the .Net elements of interest to
developers, such as its forthcoming C# programming language and its
next release of its Visual Studio development environment, due to
ship next year.”
“Microsoft is slated to embellish on these components at the PDC
this week. The company is expected to detail its so-called .Net
framework — the environment that enables the creation, deployment
and maintenance of .Net services and applications. The .Net
framework is an extension of the Microsoft Component Object Model
(COM) middleware that is built into Windows 2000.”