Microsoft Tries To Figure Out How To Spread Its .Net

Microsoft describes .Net as many things, among them a platform that lives on the Internet, a "bet-the-company" bid to keep its software relevant, and a set of electronic services that follows users from computer to computer.

One key application of .Net remains unclear, however: its value to business-to-business commerce. Even CEO Steve Ballmer admits Microsoft's strategy is incomplete. "The case we haven't fleshed out is where .Net services help in B-to-B interaction," he said in an interview this spring. "We've got a lot of bright guys thinking about how to steer that to B-to-B integration."

The lack of demonstrable B-to-B applications built with Microsoft's new object model, run time, and transport protocol helps explain the results of a September InformationWeek Research Web survey of 500 operating system-savvy IT professionals: Just 30% say they understand the value of .Net to their company. Only 15% are undertaking any development projects that use .Net, though another 19% say they're considering it.

Part of the reason could be that the Microsoft products which most completely incorporate .Net technologies-Visual Studio.Net and the Windows.Net Server-haven't yet shipped. And according to the survey, only one-fifth of respondents say they plan to buy the upcoming development suite, a package Microsoft says is key to building .Net applications. "It's a complete departure from how Windows development has been done for the last 10 years," says John Studdard, chief technology officer at Virtual Bank, an Internet bank in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., that's an early adopter of .Net software.

Microsoft says it's writing software and negotiating partnerships that could change customers' minds about the value of learning new programming tricks.

Microsoft is talking to Fidelity Investments and other companies about using Passport-a database, API, and small client that authenticates users to Microsoft's and its partners' Web sites-to verify mutual customers. For example, employees of companies that use Fidelity's online 401(k) management tools could each be issued Passports, with Fidelity licensing the API to authenticate all of them on its Web server, says Microsoft Passport general manager Hal Howard. Instead of maintaining thousands of trust relationships, which is complex, companies could have a single trust relationship with Passport, Howard says. Microsoft could unveil deals as early as next week at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

Microsoft also says two companies doing business online could establish a one-to-one trust relationship, storing Passport account information themselves, with Microsoft only issuing electronic authentication tokens. That's a shift from earlier Microsoft rhetoric, which maintained that only the software vendor could store Passport data.

Microsoft also is developing "Hailstorm" Web services aimed at E-business, which are at least a year away. Howard declined to comment on them.

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