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Two years ago, at the high-water mark for the dot-com boom, Microsoft introduced its .Net initiative. On Wednesday, amid the debris of a shattered new economy and with Wall Street looking more like the boulevard of broken dreams, Bill Gates provided an update on where .Net, Microsoft and the technology industry are headed.
That update, provided by Gates at the Redmond, Wash., campus in an hour and fifteen minute presentation, has Microsoft about a third of the way along in providing the technologies, tools and services promised two years ago. As if on cue, Wall Street responded with a big rally Wednesday afternoon.
The .Net report card shows Microsoft getting an A for rallying the industry, an A for providing tools and infrastructure, a C for developing building block services, a C for providing software as a service, and incompletes in providing a federated .Net environment and a transformative user experience. Federated environments are computing structures where the services are distributed rather than in centralized structures.
Of course the report card provided by Gates was a lot like having the student fill out his own grades, but Gates contended that despite the dot-com demise and lackluster economy, Microsoft made the right bets two years ago and remains in a leadership position to take advantage of the computing era built around services.
“This is 100 percent a software challenge and one of the toughest we have ever tackled,” Gates told some 100 technical and business journalists attending the update. He compared the software challenge as being on the same scale as placing a man on the moon or developing the Boeing 747.
On a more practical note, Gates provided his definition of what .Net encompasses.
“.Net is software to connect information, people, systems and devices,” Gates said repeating the definition three times. At the first .Net conference, many attendees left the event still wondering what .Net was and how Microsofts product line would encompass the .Net inititiative.
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The main themes of this years update were that Microsofts decision to use the XML format language as the fundamental .Net structure was correct, that Microsoft will continue to adhere to standards and compete on implementation, and that customers who adopt the .Net structure will be able to develop cost-effective applications and services for thousands–instead of hundreds of thousands–of dollars.
Gates managed to get through the entire briefing without mentioning the open software movement, the companys monopoly woes with the Department of Justice, and (except in brief passing) the drastic falloff in the technology industry.
Companies buying into the .Net structure will find some of the most immediate benefits in inter-company operations, Gates said. The ease with which those connections can be made spells the end for high-paid consultants spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and taking years to complete software integration tasks, Gates said. He contended that in future, .Net customers will be able to accomplish their computing goals in reduced IT budgets.
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