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At Forum 2000, Microsoft announced Microsoft.NET - a vision for the third
generation of the Internet where software is delivered as a service, accessible
by any device, any time, any place, and is fully programmable and
personalizeable. At the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference on July
11th, Microsoft unveiled the details of this vision for developers.
To enable this vision, Microsoft will deliver the .NET platform, built on public
Internet standards and protocols, with tools and services that integrate
computing and communications in new ways. The .NET platform is explicitly
designed to enable the rapid development, integration, and orchestration of any
group of Web services and applications into a single solution, and represents
the evolution of the Windows DNA programming model.
.NET Platform and Windows DNA
Microsoft introduced Windows DNA to provide a scalable architecture for
distributed, enterprise-ready Web applications. By utilizing the n-tier
computing model of Microsoft® Windows® DNA, developers have been able to use
the Web to reduce their deployment costs and achieve levels of scalability not
possible under previous architectures, which had a more monolithic and
desktop-centric approach. Windows DNA (now simply called Microsoft's Web
solution platform) is the most widely deployed Web-based application development
and deployment platform in the world today, with more than 40 percent of all
secure, transacted Web sites and almost 60 percent of the Goldman-Sachs list of
top B2B Exchanges.
Now that we have entered the third generation of Internet computing, our
customers are seeking to integrate and orchestrate many different resources and
applications on the Web into comprehensive, integrated business applications. To
effectively address these customer requirements, it is necessary to evolve our
programming model beyond Windows DNA. In short, it is essential to provide an
underlying technology fabric and development framework that is uniquely suited
to building and integrating Web services. It is also necessary to deliver
applications, infrastructure and tools that utilize this underlying fabric to
deliver richer solutions that can deliver direct end-user benefits using any
device at any time and any place.
While developers can build Web services today with Microsoft Visual Studio® 6.0
and the SOAP Toolkit, building Web services will be much easier with the new
tools and framework. Microsoft is evolving and extending the DNA platform to
simplify and support the building of these next generation applications, which
have the following attributes:
- Applications will become programmable Web services.
- Based on open Internet protocols.
- Provide a richer user experience adapted to smart clients and devices.
- Leverage globally available Web services.
What changes is not the application logic or functionality itself but the
way that applications expose functionality as a set of "Web services"
to end users and/or developers. Windows DNA applications can be extended to
become Web services, which can then be integrated and orchestrated with other
Web services using the .NET platform. The development, deployment and management
of these new applications and services will be greatly simplified by new .NET
tools and technologies delivered by Microsoft.
.NET Enterprise Servers
.NET Enterprise Servers are Microsoft's comprehensive family of server
applications for building, deploying, and managing scalable, integrated,
Web-based solutions. Designed with mission-critical performance in mind, .NET
Enterprise Servers provide scalability, reliability and manageability for the
global, Web-enabled enterprise and are built from the ground up for
interoperability using open Web standards such as XML.
The .NET Enterprise Servers build on the foundation laid with Windows DNA.
Windows DNA made it possible for companies to create the scalable Web solutions
now deployed all over the world; those solutions will be leveraged to create the
next generation of solutions as the Web continues to evolve. The fundamental
concepts used in building applications based on Windows DNA still apply, and are
instructive in understanding how the Microsoft Web solutions platform can help
solve real-world customer problems.
The core .NET Enterprise Servers include:
- Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000. The complete database and analysis
solution for rapidly delivering scalable web applications.
- Microsoft Application Center 2000. The deployment and management
tool for high availability Web applications built on Windows 2000.
- Microsoft BizTalkTM Server 2000. Orchestrate business processes
and Web services within and between organizations.
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2000. Reliable, easy to manage messaging
and collaboration solution for bringing users and knowledge together.
- Microsoft Host Integration Server 2000. Integration components for
host systems.
- Microsoft Commerce Server 2000. The solution for quickly building
an effective Online Business.
- Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000.
Integrated firewall and Web cache server built to make the Web-enabled
enterprise safer, faster, and more manageable.
- Microsoft Mobile Information Server 2001. Extends the reach of
Microsoft .NET Enterprise applications, enterprise data, and intranet
content into the realm of the mobile user.
The first generation of the .NET
Enterprise Servers are available now for customers to start building,
deploying, and orchestrating scalable, reliable Web services and applications.
The chart below illustrates the role played by previous server products, as well
as the new .NET servers, in Microsoft's Web solution platform.
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2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use.
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