| The gold release of Microsoft's .NET Framework has been released to manufacturing. You've spent a great deal of your own free time with the two previous BETA versions learning either VB.NET, ASP.NET, or C# and feel relatively comfortable that you can begin writing production applications. Still, the most difficult obstacle in your way is getting approval to put the .NET runtime on your production servers/desktops and begin developing applications in .NET. As I'm sure you'll agree, this is no small mountain to climb. |
| In today's economy, technology budgets are tight and noone wants to take risks. With this in mind, many of your arguments for object-oriented programming, threading, web services, and new data access methods are going to fall on deaf ears. The people that make the final decision don't always understand the importance of these topics and thus are not always informed enough to care. Knowing this, you'll have to spend some of your free time packaging this information for consumption by non-technical people (or technical people who aren't as technical as they should be-if you know what I mean). |
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| Here are a few suggestions for reasons why management should consider migrating to .NET |
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| 1. | .NET is not an upgrade to existing Microsoft products |
| The .NET runtime does not interfere with current Microsoft technologies on the desktop or on servers. The installation will not remove or overwrite existing software, DLLs, OCXs, or any other object. It is entirely standalone in this regard. Thus, there is extremely small risk with installing the runtime on QA and production servers. |
| 2. | Migration can take place over a long period of time |
| There is no need to completely rewrite existing applications. Plus, you can even use .NET in your web sites without rewriting the entire web site. Both Active Server Pages and ASP.NET can run on the same web site at the same time. Of course, you'll need to make a few small adjustments if you are using Application and/or Session variables but that should be minimal. You can make your migration schedule as aggressive or weak as your current workload permits. |
| 3. | The .NET runtime is free |
| Only the development tools have a cost associated with them and that cost is commensurate with their value. |
| 4. | .NET data access is considerably faster |
| My experience has shown 3 fold speed improvements over standard ADO/ASP. Fast loading pages are important to scalability. With this in mind, I'd strongly suggest putting together a small speed test with classic ASP vs ASP.NET with timers on the pages. Page load times are a matter of perception. If you can quantify that perception, you are one step closer to the top of the mountain. |
| 5. | Low training costs |
| The overall costs for training in hard dollars could almost be zero. Your free time at work is already budgeted. With all of the great books and internet sites out there, you can find out how to do just about anything without paying top dollar for a special training class. While these classes are great, they aren't required for you to be successful. The built-in materials that come with the .NET Framework SDK and examples with Visual Studio.NET, as well as the built-in MSDN library help system, are extensive. |
| 6. | Increase employee retention |
| Eventually, the job market will pick up again and software engineers will be looking for the best place to work and expand their knowledge base. In my experience, senior level developers put a great deal of emphasis on the ability to work with the latest technologies. We understand that failure to stay current can drastically impact our ability to provide for our families in the future. It is critical for IT managers to recognize the competition we face and take steps to make their company an ideal place for talented people to work. |
| 7. | New capabilities |
| Take an objective look at the business your software supports. Try to come up with examples where web services could greatly enhance productivity and overall capabilities of the company to support its client's needs. For example, your company may benefit from Web Workspaces. This is a concept that allows desktop applications to share information with web sites. If you have data collection processes with outside departments or other companies, you may be able to drastically impact productivity. Another example may be that there are processes that currently take a long time to complete. You may be able to speed those key processes up dramatically by using ADO.NET and multithreaded components written in .NET. |
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| These are just a few suggestions for you to consider. Just remember, management needs for you to provide solid business reasons that relate to improving the bottom line before they'll give you the approval you need. I'm sure you've probably got a few items to add to this list. Feel free to click the link below and post them to our forum. We may even add them to this article as others will surely benefit. |