What Does It All Mean?

Microsoft's .NET initiative impacts consumers, businesses, software vendors, and developers.

Consumers will be the biggest beneficiaries of .NET and the foundation services. As the data is stored on the Web, they will be able to access documents and other personal information anytime, anywhere, from any smart device.

For businesses, implementing applications using Web services solves many of today's B2B and B2C integration challenges.

By making their business applications available as Web services, or by providing innovative Web services, software vendors may be able to find newer modes of revenue. Microsoft itself is gravitating toward providing a subscription-based model for its services, thereby ensuring a monthly source of revenue.

The .NET Framework helps developers write robust, secure, Internet-enabled code in a language of their choice. The rich set of class libraries provided by the .NET Framework, as well as new features in Visual Studio .NET will boost developer productivity.