Overview   What .NET Means for Business May 25, 2001 By using the Internet to enable software applications to more easily work together, Microsoft® .NET promises easier integration within and between businesses, while creating opportunities to more meaningfully connect with consumers. With .NET-connected software and services, businesses can realize improvements in the time and cost associated with developing and maintaining their business applications, as well as benefiting from empowering employees with the ability to act on vital information anywhere, from any smart device. .NET will deliver best of breed integration for businesses. Exposing Web services increases potential reach and exposure, creating new business opportunities. .NET promises substantial savings in development costs, as well as creating new revenue streams, through the use of Web services. Web Sites and Web Services For businesses to truly harness the power of the Internet, Web sites must evolve. They must learn to interact with one another as well as with existing systems and applications. Web services represent the evolution of the Web site. Integration Taking the modular aspects of modern software applications and allowing them to communicate through standard Internet protocols (XML and SOAP), Web services offer a direct means by which business processes can interact. Applications hosted internally, as well as on remote systems, can be stitched together, allowing businesses to program the Web—quickly and economically creating specialized solutions that meet unique business needs. Integrating Within Web services offer incredible value to organizations. They present the opportunity to bridge applications and information written in different programming languages and residing on differing platforms. In this manner, applications from departments such as HR and Accounting can expose information as XML, sharing information in order to create a new benefits application. Using the common language runtime, part of the Microsoft .NET Framework, individual components of specific applications within a company can interact. For example, a new scheduling function written in COBOL can be used with an existing HR application that was written in a different computing language. Integrating with Partners Not only can companies more easily integrate internal applications, they can also access services offered by other businesses. By combining Web services exposed on the Internet, companies can program the Web to create a wide variety of value-added applications. For example, an automobile manufacturer could unify benefits, payroll, stock trading, and insurance services into a single, seamless financial management portal for its employees, or they could integrate inventory control, fulfillment mechanisms, and purchase order tracking into a comprehensive supply chain management system. Integrating with Customers By enabling different software programs to interact, .NET creates new and exciting possibilities. A user will be able to establish an identity and move seamlessly from one .NET experience to another. They will be able to help manage their data and act on it anywhere, anyplace, and at anytime. They will have more power and control over their information, as they enable applications to interact on their behalf. A first-time car buyer could more easily shop for the latest model by allowing Web services that communicate location and identity to interact with the Web services from the auto manufacturer. Businesses that expose key business processes as Web services expand the customer and business interactions available while creating more personal, intelligent user experiences. Reaching Out Creating Web services and exposing them on the Internet also provides another key advantage: it greatly expands the number of customers and business partners that can come in contact with a business's services. A large automobile manufacturer could expose a Web service of its delivery schedules for new vehicles. In this manner, their supply chains, dealerships as well as others, can consume the information, building other systems around it. Besides creating valuable links with partners, it creates the potential for advertising services for other businesses or customers that may not have been aware of the company or service. Rapid Development Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET and the .NET Framework empower developers to quickly and easily create cutting-edge Web services and applications, building on their existing skills sets. Through multilanguage support, developers are freed to use the appropriate language in building Web services. Seamless deployment, as well as the ability to use existing Web services, presents substantial savings opportunities for the corporate IT department. In addition to their technical capabilities, these developer technologies help alleviate the greatest scarcity in the world: skilled programmers. Applying rapid application development techniques to Web applications and services increases developer productivity, saving both time and money. Finally, by supporting any programming language, these tools tap the broadest developer talent pool (only about 10 percent of the world's developers know Java), take advantage of existing skills, and let people use the tool most appropriate for a specific task. New Opportunities With .NET-connected software and services, corporate IT departments will share in the ability to create new and novel revenue streams. By exposing key business processes that were typically locked in internal systems, the enterprise can create a number of new and exciting opportunities to make money. For example, a tax engine created for internal use could be exposed as a Web service, enabling other companies to quickly and easily use the functionality, thus, providing a new revenue stream. Empowering Employees .NET offers the promise of allowing employees to act on the appropriate information where and when they need it. It facilitates better decisions by giving people in the field, at the office, and in between the information they need in a suitable and useful form. Important client information, once locked away in isolation on a mainframe, can more easily be accessed and acted on by a salesperson on a handheld computer across the country. A contact or appointment added to a Pocket PC by a project manager while at a job site can instantly be accessible to members of the same team scattered around the world.