>I would agree with that. But VS.NET is not marketing-driven. It is driven by the experiences of customers. The product team, senior management and marketing did 100s of customer visits and spent huge amounts of time studying the experiences of customers using the 6.0 set of tools and then projected forward to where Internet development is going (Some have argued that Web Services is just Microsoft FUD, but look at how IBM, Oracle and Sun all have Web Services as a core part of their strategy to see how it is an industry thing.) and derived an application architecture (.NET Framework) and a tool to make building Web apps better.

Internet schminternet... Yes, I have seen all the stupid commercials on TV. I guess MS is also buying into the hype.

I guess that any company, regardless of whether it's really important or not at all to its success must be on the internet. Because IBM says it, because Oracle says it, and now, because MS says so.

So, what I see happening here is that all these huge companies are spending huge resources on selling products that are extremely expensive (therefore affordable to just a few clients) and priced per box (cutting their own revenue).

To me it looks as if they're all in a panic and bending over backwards to get at least some of the internet fallout. What I think will happen is that all these fear filled commercials will accomplish nothing but getting businesses on the internet just for the heck of it. Businesses who really can't afford the advertised solutions, so they will go with cheaper alternatives such as Cold Fusion (who I don't see doing much advertising, but believe will be the only one cashing in on the craze).

I looked at the demos of SOAP and ROPE and even though I believed that was a good thing. It found it great that our customers would be able to get the status of THEIR orders from OUR vendors through OUR web site. That was definitely a move in the right direction. It was an original move and it was something that was useful.

The rest, jumping on the internet bandwagon because IBM and Oracle are doing it, I think is plain dumb. Yep, now you will be able to funnel money into fear-ladden commercials on TV, but quite frankly, I don't see what else will come out of it.

Just remember what happened to Artisoft a few years ago.

Alex