Wooing Developers Is Key To Microsoft.NET

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June 22, 2000 (3:30 PM EDT)

REDMOND, WASH. -- Microsoft's sweeping new Microsoft.NET platform promises to turn websites into Web service centers, but first the software powerhouse must cultivate legions of developers to write new programs, company executives and industry analysts agreed.

Microsoft (stock: MSFT) on Thursday outlined an ambitious set of forward-thinking applications to be built around Internet services, but it acknowledged the vision will require developers to make it happen.

"This is an effort to try and win back the hearts and minds of developers," said Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Goldman Sachs.

Sherlund also called the initiative an "inflection point for the industry," and one that should reinvigorate the debate over standards with Oracle (stock: ORCL), Sun (stock: SUNW), IBM (stock: IBM), and Novell (stock: NOVL).

"There is a lot of ammunition for the feud," he said.

When asked what Microsoft will do if it is leading a parade for developers and no one follows, CEO Steve Ballmer said the results will not be known for at least six months. He stressed that Microsoft.NET is a long-term strategy.

Trying to woo new talent and maintain the loyalty of existing Windows developers, Microsoft is sponsoring a large-scale developers' conference next month where new components of the complex strategy will be released to developers, said Paul Maritz, group vice president of platforms.

"Visual Studio 7 will bring drag and drop services to the Web services world," Maritz said. "It is an open, extensible environment, and a set of technologies that are language independent. It will be available to C++ developers and others and it will be open to the academic community."

Greg Leake, Visual Studio product manager, offered a demonstration of the product that is in pre-release in limited beta and will be broadly released later this year. Leake introduced a Web design in which business logic is executed on the server.

"Visual Studio will move developers into the cutting edge of building Web applications," Leake said.

In addition to Visual Studio, Microsoft.NET will use developer tools, such as Biz Talk, which is another example of Microsoft betting heavily on the XML standard, and the BizTalk Application Designer, which is built on technology from Visio, the widely used business-diagramming software company recently acquired by Microsoft.

"We need to bring a much broader sphere of developers," Maritz said. "Businesses need to go from having just a web site to being a web service."

The development community must respond to those challenges, he said.

"There are not enough developers in the world," Maritz said. "We need to bring in the business community and integrate web services and corporate services."

On top of the tools is a new set of platform building blocks, including services such as identity, storage, rules and preferences, messaging, and device management, he said.

"This new generation requires a new foundation," Maritz said. "We have this new set of standards upon which we will build. We will make it a lot easier to build. We will enable developers."