TECHTARGET: The Information Architect
Builders of the 21st Century IT Infrastructure
Microsoft .Net: Planning today could be an advantage tomorrow
With the release months away, many are still not ready to embrace
this technology. However, now might be the time to learn about .Net
because experts believe that it will be highly successful a few years
down the road.
By Eric B. Parizo, Assistant News Editor
Understanding the many different ways Microsoft .Net may soon impact
enterprise technology is about as easy as clawing into a watermelon
with your bare hands.
Microsoft Corp. has already claimed that .Net, its upcoming XML-based
Web services and application development platform, will revolutionize
every industry from healthcare to manufacturing. But its full
release is months away, and much of the IT community is still far
from sold on it. In fact, Microsoft recently stated that the benefits
of .Net wouldn't be fully realized until 2003.
With that said, is now the time to invest in .Net to gain a
first-mover advantage over competitors? Or should cautious
enterprises pursue Java-based development and give up on Microsoft
altogether? Experts believe .Net will ultimately be a success, but
developers and enterprises will challenge Microsoft to demonstrate
.Net's worth every step of the way.
What it is
Essentially, .Net is a total overhaul of Microsoft's Web Solution
Platform, or Distributed interNet Applications Architecture (DNA). In
other words, it's the common code framework used by nearly all
Microsoft applications, such as Windows, Internet Explorer and IIS
Web server, and it is also the framework for third-party application
development based on Microsoft technology.
Edward Roman, CEO of The Middleware Co., a consulting firm in Austin,
Texas, said .Net is a significant improvement over prior Microsoft
platforms.
"When you w
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rite programs that run in .Net, they are interpreted by
another program, and that interpreter is like a (safety) container
for your program," essentially keeping it secure, Roman said. "Also,
the languages you program in are easier than with other
technologies."
Those development languages, however, are where the praise for
Microsoft ends and the controversy begins. Microsoft's upcoming
software suite for developers, Visual Studio.Net, will not only
include updated versions of stalwart programming languages Visual
Basic and Visual C++, but will also introduce a new language called
C# (pronounced C sharp), which has been heavily touted by Microsoft.
Tom Barnaby, lead instructor with developer training firm InterTech
Inc. in St. Paul, Minn., said many of the millions of Visual Basic
developers around the world have worried that Microsoft would phase
out their language, basically making their knowledge obsolete, in
favor of C#. Microsoft recently eased those fears somewhat by
pledging to support both C# and VB.
Roman said C# is actually less like VB and more like Sun
Microsystems' Java programming language, and is also far superior to
Visual Basic and C++. However, most of the developer community is
still debating its value.
"I think that it will undoubtedly become the de facto language for
programming server side applications, if you're using .Net. I don't
see a lot of people using VB anymore. I think C# is going to be the
way to go," said Roman.
Barnaby disagreed. "The two languages are almost equal," he said,
adding that each language has capabilities the other lacks.
Gartner's VP of Internet strategy, David Smith, said Visual Basic has
the edge. "I think the majority of .Net development will still be
done in VB, and it'll be just fine for people who have that
expertise," he said.
Luckily, since even the experts disagree, most companies can bow out
of the .Net debates for now, unless development is at the heart of
their businesses. Roman said ISVs, consultants and large enterprises
-- all of which depend heavily on profits from application
development -- will be forced to choose a game plan early on.
Focusing development resources
So how should a typical Microsoft-centric enterprise decide where and
how to focus its development resources? Roman said there are three
choices, each with varying degrees of risk.
He said sticking with VB and C++ is the safest move, because both
will remain viable on the .Net platform. Additionally, developers
would require relatively little training to learn the new, .Net
features added to each language.
Another option is to fully embrace .Net by investing early in C#
training for developers, because of its perceived strength in
building mission-critical applications. However, since C# has not yet
been released and its true potential is still unknown, Roman
recommended only "the visionary firms" that would benefit from being
first to market with C# applications take that approach.
Finally, converting to Java development is also an option, but would
likely mean abandoning a huge prior investment in workable
Microsoft-based applications. New spending would also be required,
mainly for training, which Barnaby said might not even be worthwhile.
"If you look at the learning curve to go from any of the current
Microsoft technologies to .Net, it's going to be the same, if not a
smaller, than going to Java would be," said Barnaby.
Roman said all three of those approaches should be viewed as
long-term investments, as an ROI will not be immediate. An investment
in training is never a bad decision, he said, especially regarding
.Net, because if implemented properly its new technology could shave
months off of development projects.
The bottom line, said Smith, is that there may be no wrong decision
strategically, because .Net will gradually grow and prosper alongside
Java for some time to come.
"Neither provides the solution to everything, so people are going to
need both. They're not going to want everything on Microsoft
platforms, and there's a lot of stuff out there that isn't Java,
especially in large enterprises," Smith said.
MORE INFORMATION ON THIS TOPIC:
SearchWin2000 has a Featured Topic that explains .Net in more
detail.
SearchVB has a Featured Topic on developer issues related to .Net
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