Kevin,

>But the last 5 years (and even going back further) has seen a shift from functionality to platform. A high level manager may not understand connection pooling, but does understand the value of a technology decision based on market trends, where Microsoft is going, and whether the chosen platform will have an increasing or decreasing # of developers over the next several years....which is ultimately a business decision as well!

>I invite others with similar experieces to share what they've seen...

What I've seen is that a few business I know are shifting from home made software to ERP/ERM software, because that is getting more powerfull and cheaper by the minute. I've seen one application beein replaced by it and one apportunity lost by it. It had nothing to do with VFP, VB or .NET. They wanted to have a proven system that could be installed pretty quickly.

Whether you like it or not, but that is the future of the enteprise solutions. Of course some special applications that are doing something pretty unique might be build in some other solution. But what you want to describe of the growing market of .NET I would see a bit differently.

No doubt that .NET will have a steady market for all those propetary solutions and add-ons to ERP/ERM solutions. And if the MBF (Microsoft Business Framework) will be released and beeing based on .NET it may be a different story, but we are not there yet.

.NET seems to be rare in the places I come. Even the (academical) hospitals I frequently visit with 120 IT people don't use it. Mainly because they have an investment in Java and VB, but also because of the older hardware and OSs which basically makes .NET a no-no. Not to say that won't change in the future, but to such kind of places currently I can't even sell a .NET solution !!
Same at the government level here. The rule of 'keep it simple' and you have a much better chance of getting the job.

Again no doubt this will change in the future, but unlike developers clients (and specifically BIG clients) are not waiting on new development platforms and really don't like to be on the cutting edge.

So currently the situation is that .NET (at least AFAIK see it here in holland) caught between what you'd call old technologies on the mom-and-pop (what ever its definition is) side and by the ERP/ERM solutions filling the enteprise market.

And yes, I know about the trends. However I'm reading something different from it that you do.
Surely it is a great improvement from VB. It has a very wide application. It is technically superiour in many aspects, but it is by far not the magical silver bullet. Even if it is at some point in time, you'll have to accept it takes significant amounts of time to let both developers as clients (if they care about the platform) to be ready for it.

Walter,