>The one slightly indirect, but still critical market element .NET did not anticipate, and IMO this is a potentially very serious factor, is the entire web re-trenching and compression. .NET focuses a lot on the web. But the web movement clearly is not going to move anywhere near as fast as was thought only a year ago.

FWIW, I do not agree with this statement. I don't see a retrenchment in e-business. I see a bunch of dotcom startups with shaky business models going under. I see some perhaps overly broad initiatives being rethought. And of course, as we enter an economic slowdown many have to adjust. But I see nothing but accelerating interest in businesses taking advantage of the Web. E-business is here to stay.

Let me give you a perfect example of what .NET means and how Web Services make it possible. You are a sales manager and you are sitting at your desk running the monthly numbers. Because you have a rich Windows client you have full reporting functionality, with fancy graphics and drilldowns, etc.

Now you have to take a trip. You are sitting in the airport and you dial up over the recently installed wireless connection in the airport and you run the same reports in the browser version of your reporting client. How does this work? Because your report server sends the data to you in XML via a Web Service.

Now you go on vacation. You aren't going to bring your computer. But you do have your wireless enabled Palm or IPaq. You now run the same report. The same data comes to your device via XML, but it gets formatted appropriately, using the mobile version of your reporting client.

Don't yet have an IPaq because it's backordered 6 months? Fine. Use your Web enabled cell phone. You won't get graphics, but you can see text.

The report server runs the same reports and sends the same data as a Web service using XML. The device formats the data appropriately.

This is what .NET is all about. Getting to your information anytime, any place, any device. This is what Web Services are all about. Interest in using the Web in this way is phenomenal and growing.

Our job in the Developer Division here is to provide a set of tools for people to build the next generation of Web apps and Web services. That is what the .NET Framework and Visual Studio.NET is all about.

I agree that adoption will no doubt be slower than we want <bg>, but I completely disagree that we misread the market need/demand for what we are doing.

Robert