[InfoWorld]

Microsoft is boasting that it has surpassed Java usage with .Net and is preparing to make its application development platform more conducive to Web services.

In a speech at the VSLive conference in New York last week, Eric Rudder, Microsoft senior vice president  of server and tools, touted progress versus the rival Java platform as well as future products such as Indigo, a Web services offering now in beta release. Indigo is to be discussed at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles in late-October.

"It's kind of amazing to think the last time I spoke at VSLive we were just on the cusp of shipping Visual Studio .Net 2003," Rudder said, according to a transcript of his speech. "And we completed that, we did an amazing job of really getting that product out."

"When we started out a year ago, it was hard. We were still behind Java by a considerable margin. They were about 30 percent share. But we actually launched the product and made some amazing traction, started to catch up. Luckily, Java flattened out and we've actually passed Java usage with .Net usage, and this trend actually shows no sign of abating," said Rudder. "So overall, competitively, we're doing fairly well."

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