Microsoft says that .Net is a strategy for extending an XML Web services architecture across everything it does. The key word is strategy: Microsoft stresses that .Net is not a product. But .Net is also a corporate computing push—a move into a space Unix has ruled—and that's sparked a platform war. Simply put, we've got Sun devotees coding with J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) in one corner and Microsoft loyalists working with VisualStudio.Net in the other. The winner may well shape the outcome of Web services for years.

So, naturally, Microsoft is pumping its considerable resources into the .Net-in-the-enterprise campaign. It's promoting early victories like Credit Suisse First Boston's switch from Unix, as well as the experience of Newport News Shipyards. According to Microsoft, the shipyards built a system using Visual Studio.Net framework and Web services to connect CAD systems, project-management applications, and procurement and accounting apps running on a variety of platforms—then extended it all to some 20 different subcontractors.