ICL ploughs money into promoting .Net

NEWS ICL has set up a 30-strong specialist arm devoted entirely to pushing Microsoft's .Net solutions on companies looking to implement web services. It has sunk over £1m in training up this division which will provide consultancy to web services customers. It has also announced a pilot implementation for the technology to demonstrate all the benefits the technology can bring. Derek Sayers, MD of ICL's e-innovations division, said the latest tools from Microsoft enable web-services to be built quickly: "Customers don't realise you now don't need to build everything yourself. You can use tools to create applications, and then outsource other functions across the web. "We are quickly enabling a real web services world. There are no monolithic applications anymore." Sayers said the unit will be focusing initially on business-to-consumer web services.