Microsoft.NET Enterprise Server Software Platform
(content derived from Microsoft.com)

.NET Enterprise Servers are Microsoft's comprehensive family of server applications for building, deploying, and managing scalable, integrated, Web-based solutions. Designed with mission-critical performance in mind, .NET Enterprise Servers provide scalability, reliability and manageability for the global, Web-enabled enterprise and are built from the ground up for interoperability using open Web standards such as XML.

The .NET Enterprise Servers build on the foundation laid with Windows DNA (see next section for DNA description). Windows DNA made it possible for companies to create the scalable Web solutions now deployed all over the world; those solutions will be leveraged to create the next generation of solutions as the Web continues to evolve. The fundamental concepts used in building applications based on Windows DNA still apply, and are instructive in understanding how the Microsoft Web solutions platform can help solve real-world customer problems.

The core .NET Enterprise Servers include:

• Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000
The complete database and analysis solution for rapidly delivering scalable web applications.

• Microsoft Application Center 2000
The deployment and management tool for high availability Web applications built on Windows 2000.

• Microsoft BizTalk™ Server 2000
Orchestrate business processes and Web services within and between organizations.

• Microsoft Exchange Server
2000 Reliable, easy to manage messaging and collaboration solution for bringing users and knowledge together.

• Microsoft Host Integration Server 2000
Integration components for host systems.

• Microsoft Commerce Server 2000
The solution for quickly building an effective Online Business.

• Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration
Server 2000
Integrated firewall and Web cache server built to make the Web-enabled enterprise safer, faster, and more manageable.

• Microsoft Mobile Information Server 2001
Extends the reach of Microsoft .NET Enterprise applications, enterprise data, and intranet content into the realm of the mobile user.

The first generation of the .NET Enterprise Servers are available now to start building, deploying, and orchestrating scalable, reliable Web services and applications. The chart below illustrates the role played by previous server products, as well as the new .NET servers, in Microsoft's Web solution platform.


Microsoft.NET Platform and Windows DNA
(content derived from Microsoft.com)

Microsoft introduced Windows DNA to provide a scalable architecture for distributed, enterprise-ready Web applications. By utilizing the n-tier computing model of Microsoft® Windows® DNA, developers have been able to use the Web to reduce their deployment costs and achieve levels of scalability not possible under previous architectures, which had a more monolithic and desktop-centric approach. Windows DNA (now simply called Microsoft's Web solution platform) is the most widely deployed Web-based application development and deployment platform in the world today, with more than 40 percent of all secure, transacted Web sites and almost 60 percent of the Goldman-Sachs list of top B2B Exchanges.

Now that we have entered the third generation of Internet computing, our customers are seeking to integrate and orchestrate many different resources and applications on the Web into comprehensive, integrated business applications. To effectively address these customer requirements, it is necessary to evolve our programming model beyond Windows DNA. In short, it is essential to provide an underlying technology fabric and development framework that is uniquely suited to building and integrating Web services. It is also necessary to deliver applications, infrastructure and tools that utilize this underlying fabric to deliver richer solutions that can deliver direct end-user benefits using any device, any time, and any place.

While developers can build Web services today with Microsoft Visual Studio® 6.0 and the SOAP Toolkit, building Web services will be much easier with the new tools and framework. Microsoft is evolving and extending the DNA platform to simplify and support the building of these next generation applications, which have the following attributes:

• Applications will become programmable Web services.
• Based on open Internet protocols.
• Provide a richer user experience adapted to smart clients and devices.
• Leverage globally available Web services.

What changes is not the application logic or functionality itself but the way that applications expose functionality as a set of "Web services" to end users and/or developers. Windows DNA applications can be extended to become Web services, which can then be integrated and orchestrated with other Web services using the .NET platform. The development, deployment and management of these new applications and services will be greatly simplified by new .NET tools and technologies delivered by Microsoft.