In his COMDEX/Fall 2000 kickoff keynote address on Sunday, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates announced the public availability of the first beta version of Microsoft Visual Studio.NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework, two key technologies for enabling developers to build Web Services on the .NET Platform. Web Services are applications and components made available over the Web via XML and SOAP, and are the key programmable building blocks of the next-generation Internet. Microsoft is making beta 1 of Visual Studio.NET and the .NET Framework broadly available to millions of customers and industry partners.

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