Before the official announcement of .NET, the term NGWS was used for Microsoft's plans for producing an "Internet-based platform of Next Generation Windows Services".

Steve Ballmer quote January 2000:

"Delivering an Internet-based platform of Next Generation Windows Services is the top priority of our company. The breakthroughs we’re talking about here include changes to the programming model, to the user interface, to the application integration model, the file system, new XML schema....."

Microsoft. NET The Microsoft. NET strategy was presented by Microsoft officials to the rest of the world in June 2000:

• .NET is Microsoft's new Internet and Web strategy
• .NET is NOT a new operating system
• .NET is a new Internet and Web based infrastructure
• .NET delivers software as Web Services
• .NET is a framework for universal services
• .NET is a server centric computing model
• .NET will run in any browser on any platform
• .NET is based on the newest Web standards

The biggest changes in computing being fast CPUs, high bandwidth switched Ethernet, the internet, large hard drives, plenty of RAM, and scalable systems across multiple processors coupled with 64 bit, GHz, hyper-threading dual microprocessors -- this decade is giving a new dimension to the computing world.

Microsoft's previous mixture of different languages, operating systems, DLLs, registry, COM, DDE, OLE, ActiveX, remote access, data access, dynamic web page design, etc. -- was getting out of control mainly because users resist change and they needed to be backwards compatible. Fortunately, someone at Microsoft stepped back, looked at what needs to be done with computing and the internet and started from scratch and they found ways to make .NET backwards compatible with all the "clunker" software that should be left behind.