The .Com Is Dead, Long Live .NET!

Microsoft wants to play God again! Like MSDOS and Windows, which became the life forces of the PC revolution, Microsoft wants its new .NET platform to be the life force of the Internet revolution of the next generation. But this God of the digital age doesn't give you anything for free. You will have to pay heavy royalty to this God every time you breathe in the web-enabled world.

That's a clever strategy Microsoft has planned for grabbing the biggest share of the Internet revolution. The future of information technology is Internet-centric and Microsoft's vision of the Internet is Microsoft-centric. Here is what Microsoft has to say about the .NET vision:

"Microsoft .NET extends the ideas of both the Internet and the operating systems by making the Internet itself the basis of a new operating system. Ultimately, this will allow developers to create programs that transcend device boundaries and fully harness the connectivity of the Internet in their applications. Microsoft .NET is thus a significant evolution from current approaches to computing."

While I am still struggling with Windows 2000 installations of my clients, I find this .NET vision a bit difficult to digest! And I know there are many more people like me who are still very comfortable with Windows 98 and Office97. This has been the case not only in India but all over the world. The adoption of Windows 2000 and the Office 2000 suite has been slower than expected. 

What is .NET?

The core components of .NET, according to Microsoft, will be --

• A set of building block services for the Internet operating system, which will include Passport.NET (for user authentication) as well as services for file storage, user preference management, calendar management, and many other tasks.

• The infrastructure and tools to build and operate a new generation of services, including Visual Studio.NET, the .NET Enterprise Servers, the .NET Framework, and Windows.NET 

• NET device software to enable a new breed of smart Internet devices 

• NET is expected to make computers easier to use and far more functional. Specifically, by freeing them from the constraints of hardware. As the user data will be on the Internet, it will be accessed from any desktop, laptop, cell phone, or PDA, and can be integrated across applications and products.

.NET in India

This advantage of .NET itself may make it a disaster for the Indian users. Today I can buy my computers from a reliable vendor and then take good care of my computers so that they give me uninterrupted service. If I want my data to be portable, I carry it on a Zip disk or on a laptop. Tomorrow when .NET becomes the standard (if Microsoft's vision comes true) you will be caught between two giants of the Internet world. 

Microsoft on one side, will force you to subscribe to every upgrade even if you may be comfortable with an earlier version and ISPs like VSNL on the other side, who can make it impossible to do any work during working hours due to bandwidth bottlenecks! Add to this, the possibility of an indefinite strike by VSNL engineers, which can cripple the entire country, if everything is hooked up to the Internet via .NET applications. With .NET applications running on the Internet, someone must make sure that the Internet itself is always up and running.

Developers dilemma

.NET will also change the way developers create new applications. At the core of the new development paradigm is the concept of a Web service. Such application software will not be installed on every individual PC from a CD, but it will be a service you must subscribe to, through the Internet. These applications will run over the Internet or Intranet using standard Internet protocols like hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and XML. 

The .NET base framework will offer many high-level services so that developers don't have to code the same services repeatedly. The .NET common language runtime engine will provide the technologies to support rapid software development. It will have a consistent programming model. All application services will be offered via a common object-oriented programming model. 

Unlike today, where some OS facilities are accessed via DLL functions and other facilities are accessed via COM objects and installing components for a new application can overwrite components of an old application, making the old application behave strangely or stop functioning altogether. The .NET architecture will separates application components so that an application will always load the components with which it was built. A managed .NET application can execute on any platform that supports .NET, even other than Windows in the future. 

The Internet-centric concept of .NET may work well in the US and in the developed countries, but in India, it may create more problems than to solve them. With no guarantee that the bandwidth situation will improve soon, an overdose of .NET technology can be injurious to the health. Even in the US, an overdose of high technology can ruin a good product, as in the case of the Mercedes Benz S-430. A $90,000 car with so much of high-tech gadgetry that you may need to get a Master's Degree in Computer Science and Telecommunications in addition to your driving license to be able to drive the car.

The success of the .NET strategy also depends on the number of software developers who will embrace the .NET vision, and Microsoft is trying very hard to get the developers into its net, that is .NET! If the Microsoft vision comes true, there will be a new .NET era in the field of information technology that will follow the short lived dotcom era. The dotcom is dead, long live the .NET!

Ashok Dongre is an advertising and marketing professional, specializing in web site design.