.Net: 3 Years of the 'Vision' Thing

If I believe this article from eWeek, I can see clearly some conflicts rising in Microsoft senior management !

The end of last month marked the third anniversary of Microsoft's launch of its .Net strategy, which executives such as Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said at the time was a "bet-the-company thing." But three years later, reactions are mixed as to whether that strategy, along with the vision that accompanied it, has played out as the Redmond, Wash., software developer had hoped.

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.

Charney also defended Microsoft's recent decision to drop the .Net moniker from almost all product names, which has created the perception among some that the strategy was being abandoned.
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