Microsoft's must-win grasp for developer hearts and minds

You know something major is going down when we send more than one reporter to an event. So it was today when a trip - albeit just up the road to the Natural History Museum - was warranted by two silicon staffers for the official coming out party for Microsoft's .Net developer toolkit, Visual Studio .Net.

Now there are two sides to this launch. The big picture is all about the future of XML-based web services. They should seamlessly connect together all manner of websites and applications over the internet. Our view is that web services will be big - almost as big as the hype, in fact - even if the concept isn't the easiest to explain.

The other side concerns Microsoft's gambit. If something will be this important, it wants to be at its centre. But at this stage we're not willing to say Microsoft will be, at least not to the degree that it now dominates some markets.

But why is Microsoft acting so confidently, especially when rivals such as IBM and Sun to name just two are also confident their technology will play a part in the web services revolution? For one thing, some 3.5 million copies of Visual Studio .Net and the .Net Framework have been distributed to developers. Microsoft claims it has 2.5 million more developers than Sun has with Java.

And according to one Microsoft partner we spoke to, the C# language used for .Net development is certainly "clean and nice".

Is that enough? Certainly allowing the creation of applications is key to the success of web services, and momentum from Microsoft - the best-known applications company - will be important for the overall revolution plus it's own future.

But let's not get carried away with Microsoft's push for developers' hearts and minds and assume it will be the only player in this particular market.

We'll be bringing you developer and partner reaction to what chairman Gates called "among the most important products ever released by Microsoft" later.