March 15, 2003
Microsoft to .NET Developers:
Learn To Program Office, CRM and Accounting
Programmable Business Portal
Requires .NET Skills
Analysis:
The whole .NET strategy by Microsoft seems like a replay of
the Windows strategy. For this with medium-term memories, recall that when
Microsoft had a lock on the OS market for PCs, they worked on Windows
concurrently with those Windows apps we now call Office. We all know well that
worked out for market adoption of both the Windows OS and Office
itself.
It appears that the same strategy is being played out with
server side apps (accounting, CRM, etc) for businesses. Since betting on
Microsoft is usually advised, you might want to examine the programmability of
these new .NET-customizable (vertical) apps from Microsoft. Skills in these
areas could differentiate you from your competition and provide more
opportunities this year and next.
You might also want to check out
the second link, which describes .NET programmability for tablet PCs.
http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/crn/40591.asp“The
software, sometimes called Business Desktop, has been tested by Microsoft
Business Solutions partners for months and was first publicly demonstrated at
Stampede, the MBS partner conference last September. “
http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/crn/39888.asp“At
its VSLive Show here Tuesday, Microsoft set the beta availability of Visual
Studio Tools for Office for March, and unveiled a development kit for its Tablet
PC product and a beta of five ASP.Net starter
kits.”