TheMicrosoft .NET strategy is amarketing plan thatMicrosoft followed in the early 2000s.Steve Ballmer described it as the company's "most ambitious undertaking since Internet Strategy Day in 1995". In support of this strategy, between 2000 and 2002, Microsoft released ".NET" branded updates to its works, includingVisual Studio .NET,Visual Basic .NET,.NET Passport,.NET My Services,.NET Framework,ASP.NET andADO.NET. A Windows .NET Server was also announced. Microsoft had plans to includeMicrosoft SQL Server,Microsoft Exchange Server andMSN into this strategy.[1][2][3][4][5]
By 2003, however, the .NET strategy had dwindled into a failed branding campaign because the brand had failed to articulate what Microsoft had in mind in the first place. As such, Windows .NET Server was released under the title ofWindows Server 2003.[6] Since then, Visual Studio and .NET Passport have been stripped of ".NET" in their brandings. However, Microsoft and the rest of the computing industry use ".NET" to indicate close association with .NET Framework, e.g..NET Compiler Platform,.NET Foundation and.NET Reflector.
