Microsoft eyes developers for .NET push

NEWS Microsoft has unveiled its Visual Studio .NET products, which will allow developers to create applications for the .NET environment. Take-up of the product is crucial to Microsoft, because without widespread developer support its .NET vision has little hope of succeeding. Microsoft will ship two versions of the product, one for developers and one for "architects" - those who manage teams of developers. The two products Visual Studio.NET Enterprise Architect (VSEA), and Visual Studio.NET Enterprise Developer (VSED) will be available to users before the end of the year, although no exact release date has been set. Currently a beta version of Visual Studio .NET Professional is available. Microsoft says its .NET platform will allow the development of sophisticated web-based services.