TechEd 2001 throws .NET to developers

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By Matt Berger

(IDG) -- Developers will soon be able to turn all the publicity for Microsoft's .Net initiative into some real, live ones and zeros.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker hosts its annual TechEd conference in Atlanta starting Monday. The gathering of developers keen on programming languages such as C++ and Visual Basic is expected to be the launch pad for the flurry of partnerships and announcements from companies developing applications and Web services based on Microsoft's .NET initiative.

Leading the way, Microsoft said it will release at TechEd Beta 2 versions of its .NET Framework -- or what some developers are calling the Windows operating system for the Internet -- and Visual Studio.NET, an environment for developing applications and Web services that can be accessed by any browser and a variety of devices using industry standards such as XML and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).

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Also expected at the conference are a variety of new releases from software tools vendors offering their own building blocks for companies looking to make applications and services .NET-compliant.

"We're going to hear early announcements," said Chris Le Tocq, principal analyst at Guernsey Research in Los Altos, Calif. ".NET doesn't pick up its stride until next year, but I'm sure there are a lot of companies working on it."

Development tool maker Infragistics, one of three vendors said to be demonstrating beta products for .NET during the four-day event, is expected to release beta 2 versions of its UltraServerTree and UltraListBar, server-side and client-side components that are .Net-compliant. Final releases of those components will come in line with Microsoft's final release of Visual Studio.NET, according to Bob Wolf, senior vice president of sales for Infragistics.

Microsoft said it expects to release the final Visual Studio.NET and the .NET Framework, which will have support for its new C# language and Visual Basic.NET, by December. The .NET Compact Framework, for building applications and services on thin devices such as PDAs, will be released in beta in the second half of 2001, the company has said.

"I think it's an exciting time," Wolf said. ".NET is a very real platform and a robust platform for people building out applications. It's the logical direction for development to go."

Technology consulting firm Accenture is also expected to release a set of tools to provide a way for its enterprise customers to turn their applications and services into .NET-ready products.

Anticipation over the release of new building blocks for .Net comes at a competitive time for companies building platforms for Web services. Microsoft is going up against similar efforts from Sun Microsystems, which concluded its JavaOne Developers Conference last week in San Francisco, where Java tools for developing Web services took center stage. Hewlett-Packard this week also offered journalists a peek at one of its Web services platforms under development, called CoolTown, at the Palo Alto, Calif., campus of HP Labs. And IBM is making noise with its WebSphere platform for Web services.

Companies that will actually use these tools and server products to build Web services have also begun to rear their heads. A number of additional companies developing on Microsoft's .NET Framework are also expected to come forward at TechEd, Microsoft officials said.

Online auction community eBay and American Express were two of the initial companies to come out in support of .NET, announcing in March that they would begin outfitting their backend servers with the .NET Framework. Support for front-end applications, or the actual services and applications that will be offered on the .NET Framework, has also recently surfaced.

Just last week, online printing firm iPrint.com announced it would become .NET-compliant, creating a Web service that it said would be accessible from any Web site or software application.

Redondo Beach, Calif.-based ProcessClaims, an online insurance claims exchange, also said Monday it plans to become .NET-compliant and offer Web services that allow various parties in the auto collision repair process to integrate their services over the Web. The company said it will use Microsoft's Technology Center in Silicon Valley to develop and test its Web services, where its developers will have access to Microsoft Consulting Services and the most current hardware and software technologies on the market.

"We see companies starting to work with [the beta tools] already," Wolf said. "We were very surprised at the quality of the first beta tools and the reception we've seen, for the second beta set looks exceptionally solid."

Beyond the early releases of toolkits at TechEd, a number of companies will display their latest technologies in the areas of security and software based on Microsoft's server line. Test, development, and management software maker Compuware said it will make an announcement in conjunction with Microsoft's Mobile Information Server.

A Canadian server software maker called Ixiasoft will demonstrate its TEXTML embedded content server for XML native databases, which works complementary to Microsoft's SQL Server, according to the company's CEO Philippe Gelinas.

Microsoft's .NET Framework is not the only Web services platform Ixiasoft plans to support, Gelinas said, but he expects progress made by companies building XML-based tools and infrastructure with .NET in mind to propel the entire Web services industry forward.

"If you make the abstraction of .NET as Web services, yes, we expect strong growth," Gelinas said. "Only recently has the market started to realize that XML is real important and relevant.

"As early as a year ago we still had to explain how important XML is when we made pitches to customers," he added. "Now it's just a given."