Comment Articles

Clarifying the .Net message

Tags:
Clarify Message,
Web Services,
Developer,
Microsoft

John Carroll ZDNet US

Published: 16 Sep 2002 15:59 BST

However, I still manage to buy cars. To manage this astounding feat, I use statistics compiled by third parties that tell me the performance characteristics of the car. I can determine what miles to the gallon (or kilometres per litre) a car gets, how fast it goes from 0-60, how it performs in cold weather, its tendency (or lack thereof) to seize up on long journeys through the Arizona desert, etc. I have absolutely no idea how the engine manages any of these things. I just know that it can do it based on third-party data.

In that light, the best way to promote .Net to non-programmers (CIOs, Managers, technology journalists) is to emphasise that .Net is developer productivity technology, and support that statement with third-party statistics. Create comparison tables showing how much more productive .Net developers are. Show that fewer bugs are found in .Net code, or that .Net applications are more secure.

What Microsoft has to change
Microsoft's problem has been its failure to keep the .Net definition distinct from products that might be used in or by .Net applications. The core definition should be that ".Net is developer productivity technology." Every press release or marketing blurb needs to include that basic statement as an axiom. Furthermore, this definition should be tightly associated with the .Net "framework" or SDK (any .Net SDK, including Ximian's Mono and dotGNU), so that customers can understand clearly that .Net is technology used by developers to build applications.

To support this definition should be data that shows what .Net does for consumers. Microsoft should show companies the development productivity and quality gains which result from shifting to .Net. Give them concrete statistics that emphasise the higher security, lower bug incidence and lower cost (due to more productive developers) of .Net applications.

There is value in communicating a product's .Net association to potential customers. That doesn't mean that .Net has to be like some nonsense Gatorade flavour (what the heck does "Riptide Rush" taste like?), slapped on every paperweight that ships out of Microsoft's product division.

A separate brand would keep the .Net message of developer simplification pure while allowing ancillary products to be linked to it. Therefore, Microsoft should create a new branding label, which I'll call ".Net Technologies." .Net Technologies are products that support code written with .Net (Windows.Net Server and SQL Server.Net (Yukon) will fall into this category), or else enhance the .Net development process either through adding new functionality (MapPoint.Net) or facilitating the development process (Visual Studio.Net). ".Net Technologies" are enhancements to or facilitators of .Net development, not a requirement of it.

A distinct brand would have helped when the .Net My Services rollout was deferred. Since people didn't have a clear idea of what .Net was, the .Net in .Net My Services left people with the impression that this critically affected .Net. It didn't, because .Net My Services is no more a fundamental underpinning of .Net than BEA's WebLogic server is essential to Java.

.Net is powerful technology that offers a lot of things I have always wished were in Java. Even more important, it is Microsoft technology, which means it will be used all across the Microsoft product catalogue.

Everything in that catalogue, from operating systems and game consoles to databases and handhelds will be unified by .Net technology. This is an important productivity enhancement for developers, as it makes knowledge in one domain even more applicable in another. Microsoft just needs to find a coherent way to communicate those benefits, one that creates a simplified core message that non-programmers can understand while allowing ancillary technologies to promote their association with .Net without clouding the definition.

This is part 1 of 3 commentaries about .Net. Part 2, "Why .Net will conquer the world," will be published on Monday, September 23.

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