In prior installments, we have seen the powerful force behind the marketing of .NET. However, .NET has not come anywhere close the planned market penetration. In fact, Microsoft is in a bit of a retreat regarding .NET branding. The highly publicized .NET Server (originally due at the same time as the release of VS .NET) has quietly undergone two name changes, stripping .NET from the name (I think it's now called Windows 2003 Server).

Microsoft is a tremendously powerful marketing company -- what went wrong? In a word, arrogance.

There were (and are) plenty of problems regarding .NET but most of the issues can be distilled into two categories: (1) Overmarketing -- Microsoft has overmarketed .NET in every sense of the word. Too much advertising, too strong advertising, inaccurate promotion regarding .NET (corrected somewhat over the summer of 2002) and (2) The benefits of moving to .NET outweigh the costs. In fact, most of the Microsoft products released over the past couple of years have a tremendous upside for Microsoft, but little upside for the consumer. No amount of lipstick could hide the fact that .NET is a pig.

In short, the marketing campaign has issues, but the product(s) have bigger issues.

Let's look at some of the details surrounding .NET before it was released.

MSFT Consulting -- Microsoft told the reseller channel that MSFT Consulting will be competing with them. For years, Microsoft claimed that the consulting division was only built at the request of larger companies that asked for support directly from Microsoft. The reseller channel was furious. The response was twofold -- the reseller channel began pushing lower cost Linux based alternatives as well as not promoting MSFT products (think WinXP, Office XP, .NET).
For the longest time, MSFT claimed that not harm was being done to the reseller channel and that relations were never better. Only after .NET penetration was poor did Microsoft fess up and publicly indicate that there are serious problems with reseller relations. In essence, MSFT was trying to sell the tools and make money in the usage of those tools (Trying to outOracle Oracle).

Microsoft Select Program -- This is probably Microsoft's biggest gaffe over the last couple of years. In essence, Microsoft changed the terms of their software renewal licenses from a three year term to a one year term and aggressively raised the prices of the renewals (I believe this was in 2001). Microsoft put a gun to corporate America -- and eventually Microsoft blinked. Later, Microsoft highly publicized the "new" three year agreement after discussions with their customers -- which was basically the same agreement as before. Trouble is, the damage was done. Corporate America has begun to look at Linux as a serious alternative to Microsoft Windows products. The long and the short of it is that the biggest promoter of Linux has been none other than Microsoft's attitude toward corporations. This is eerily similar to the Ashton Tate/Fox Software legal skirmishes of the past.

Microsoft's chronic and constant pushing of .NET as something revolutionary, implying that everything you've ever done before in your IT shop or development should be thrown out in favor of .NET. Does this sound familiar? Microsoft was using .NET would outJava Java. Hardware, software, infrastructure and training costs are completely ignored.

To support the development and the deployment of .NET applications requires serious upgrades to both the hardware and software infrastructure.

Hailstorm (.NET My Services) -- This was Microsoft's highly publicized attempt to be the middleman on every transaction over the web. Trouble was, no company trusts Microsoft with their proprietary information. To this date, I don't know if Microsoft ever found a paying customer for Hailstorm.

Microsoft has adjusted the EULA on Windows XP and Windows 2000 SP3 to allow the company to alter your computer's software however Microsoft sees fit to do so.

Miami DevCon 2000 -- Full day (two?) of .NET training at the Advisor DevCon with no session alternatives, This is at a Visual FoxPro conference! Note that .NET was released to the general public nearly a year and a half later.

At the time of the release of .NET, Microsoft was publicizing that a well known company that was already deploying a mission critical application using .NET. Only later did it come out that MSFT Consulting did the whole application for free. The company in question did not help in developing or in deploying the application.

Microsoft announced at FoxPro user groups that FoxPro jobs were drying up and that you should seriously consider alternatives. FoxPro jobs were drying up (so were *all* IT jobs) but with the .COM fallout, ASP jobs were probably falling at a greater rate. No mention of that ever appeared from MSFT.... Our user group has also heard publicly that Visual FoxPro developers should consider moving to SQL Server, you'll make more money as a SQL Server person than a Visual FoxPro developer.

Take a look at other examples of misleading marketing at

http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~DemonstrableBullsh*tAboutDotNet~WIN_COM_DNA and http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~KeynoteBullsh*tAtFoxTeach2001. (Note: Paste the link to your address line in your browser, change the asterisk to an 'i') Note that Richard Hale Shaw, mentioned in the link and a former FoxPro DevCon speaker, now speaks at .NET conferences.

I've heard privately from one Microsoft Visual FoxPro person that I should stop all new development in Visual FoxPro and do all my application development in .NET. Oh yeah, .NET was still in beta at the time though Visual FoxPro 7 was released.

It's been reported that Microsoft had made private bets with the press in 2001 indicating that MSFT, through marketing, would force the marketplace over to .NET when it was released.

Microsoft has tossed out several Visual FoxPro developers from the MVP program and only added developers directly involved with the development or promotion of .NET.

At the core, VS.NET does has some clear benefits. There's an attempt to formalize and homogenize programming languages and accesses to the OS services as well as other demonstrable benefits.

However, the tactical problem with .NET is that Microsoft tried to do *everything* with it. In a perfect Microsoft world, here's what would have happened:

1) Microsoft Consulting would generate significant income in the development and deployment of VS.NET applications.
2) Marketing would be extremely effective in encouraging companies to throw out old applications in favor of VS.NET applications. To do so would also pump up sales for Windows XP, Windows 2000, Microsoft Office XP, VS.NET and other Microsoft products.
3) The Select Program would continue to generate significantly more revenue and at a quicker pace than ever.
4) Microsoft would charge a fee to act as a middleman in any Internet business transaction.

On the consumer side, here's what would happen in a perfect Microsoft world:

1) Significantly less development dollars available in the economy for software development.
2) Incredible monies spent upgrading equipment and throwing out applications in favor of new applications and programs.
3) See # 2.
4) More costs to the consumer.

Is it any wonder .NET has such a bad reputation? By their own actions, Microsoft has put a stink on .NET. There's little benefit to the consumer, but *plenty* of benefit for Microsoft. That's arrogance.

The marketing of .NET was troubling, but wasn't quite as bad. The initial .NET print advertising was quite direct and rather arrogant. And the .NET marketers lied to you and used tricky verbage to attempt to convince you that .NET was accepted more than it was. But there's no getting around the fact that the marketplace has pretty much rejected most of the nakedly selfish attempts to extract money from your wallet into Microsoft's coffers -- with little benefit in return. Ironically, the direct .NET advertising has effectively promoted Microsoft as a selfish company that produces software with little benefit to the consumer. In recognition of that fact, the print advertising strategy changed from one of talking down to you to one of trying to trick you with gimmicry.

Two years ago, Microsoft couldn't put the .NET label on a product fast enough. Now, Microsoft can't get rid of the .NET moniker fast enough. Why? In a phrase, "It's your wallet, stupid.".

In the next (and possibly last) installment, we'll discuss how Microsoft markets to the Visual FoxPro developer through print advertising.

Bill Anderson