Customers ranging from individual users to small businesses and large enterprises will face paying Microsoft in new ways, executives said. The company conceivably could draw revenue from notifying the patient's insurance company and providing the physician with the proper software to communicate with hospitals, pharmacies and insurance providers. The model, referred to as application-service provider, or ASP, is increasingly prevalent on the Web as software builders rent or sell their products to company Web sites. One reason for the transition is that software increasingly is driving a myriad of devices that, unlike the personal computer, contain few if any Microsoft products. But we do see lots of opportunities here.
Uncertainties remain .
NET is a brave new world - one that Chairman Bill Gates said will take years of research and development to reach fruition. Yet, even as it stands on the cusp of what Gates called the company's most important strategic mission since the move from DOS to Windows, Microsoft faces the uncertainties of a post-antitrust world. For .NET to work, it will need support from a large body of software developers - the broad community of programmers who build Web sites, intranets, applications for large companies and niche software for small businesses. It also will have to pass muster with antitrust regulators wary of an effort to dominate the Internet. Not only will .NET be available to developers for applications, but Microsoft wants it to work on competing platforms from Sun, Linux and others.