Gates rallies support for .Net

The future of business computing lies in access to web services from any device, according to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

He sought to rally developers behind the software giant's .Net strategy at the company's Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles last week.

.Net will offer powerful applications, creating new services which will be built on the ability of XML to seamlessly connect business processes, he explained.

Gates believes that flexibility is the key, with services accessed by computers, personal digital assistants, mobile phones and even set-top boxes.

".Net depends on three big bets. There's a big bet around XML; another around a new platform with smart clients and rich servers connected by services that are always available on the internet; and finally there's applications that tailor their appearance and their richness to a particular device," he said.

Microsoft used the conference to release the latest beta versions of its Visual Studio .Net development suite and .Net Framework, the underlying platform on which applications and services written by developers will be based.

Gates also confirmed the company's current operating system and tools roadmap. On the client side, this includes the Stinger smart phone launched earlier this year.

The Tablet PC will be released around September next year, and the first beta releases of Longhorn, the replacement for Windows XP, are expected in early 2003.

"2003 is the next major milestone. It will be very important with a lot going on in the peer-to-peer and advanced presentation environments," said Gates. "We'll have a range of servers at that time and, of course, we'll be able to go with the major new version of the tools that match up with that."

This poses significant issues for companies looking to deploy the Tablet PC. Its XP operating system and custom applications will have already been superseded by Longhorn, just months after its launch.