For four years, Microsoft has been laying the groundwork for Microsoft .NET -- the company's vision of next-generation XML Web services and applications that connect people, devices and information throughout the Internet in seamless, secure ways. Next week, Microsoft celebrates a major milestone for .NET -- worldwide availability of the tools that will propel the next generation of the Web through programmers. On Feb. 13 at VSLive! in San Francisco, Microsoft will kick off the worldwide launch of Visual Studio .NET, the comprehensive tool for rapidly building and deploying XML Web services and applications. Visual Studio .NET arms the world's software developers with powerful tools to rapidly design broad-reach Web applications for any device and any platform, and to build powerful Windows applications. It also enables developers to rapidly build reusable business logic that can be seamlessly integrated both within the organizational firewall and beyond, with suppliers, partners, consumers and others. More than just another piece of the .NET platform, Microsoft regards Visual Studio .NET as the essential enabler of .NET.

Even before the tool's formal introduction, there has been tremendous developer interest in Visual Studio .NET. Millions of developers received the beta version, and thousands them have already deployed production applications with pre-release versions. Developers say they're attracted by Visual Studio .NET's broad support for virtually every popular developer language, which vastly minimizes the retraining they need to use it. Visual Studio .NET also dramatically reduces the amount of code developers have to write for their applications -- thanks to its Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment and object-oriented approach -- enabling them to bring their applications to market more quickly. Meanwhile, the new tool enables applications that are faster and more scalable than developers can create using competitive environments. Independent experts call Visual Studio .NET crucial to the coming world of Web services and applications.