.Net: 3 Years of the 'Vision' Thing

Rob Helms, research director for Directions on Microsoft, a research company that tracks Microsoft, in Kirkland, Wash., said the .Net initiative described a vision for how software and the Internet would evolve; a new platform for software development that supported the vision; and a new business—application hosting—that would drive future growth for the company.

"Three years later, most of the hopes behind the .Net initiative have not been realized," Helms said, adding that .Net has now almost vanished from Microsoft's vocabulary.

But others, including Microsoft executives, disagreed. "I think it is important to emphasize that .Net is our Web services strategy across the company and is fundamentally something we are absolutely committed to," said Neil Charney, director of Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group, in an interview recently.

However, GM's Scott issued a strong warning to Microsoft, Sun and the other players in the Web services industry, that enterprises will not tolerate the standards wars of the past. "We have no appetite for it," he said.

Looking forward, Charney said Microsoft's top priority with .Net over the next year involves continuing to integrate it within all its products, and, as that Web services stack got higher and higher in capabilities in terms of security, reliability and transactional capability, that would be infused in more of its products. "That's where we are focused currently and moving forward and enabling that vision that we described three years ago," Charney said.