Ballmer: Microsoft .NET is about integration.(Company Operations)

AS PART OF AN ambitious effort to create an architecture that fosters data and application integration, Microsoft has laid out a broad foundation based on XML technologies that will be marketed under the name of Microsoft.NET. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard and West Coast News Editor Mark Jones, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who will be a keynote speaker at the InfoWorld CTO Forum this week, talks about how he sees this "bet-the-company" strategy paying off for Microsoft customers and its industry allies.

InfoWorld: Why should corporations pay any attention to Microsoft.NET today?

Ballmer: There's a ton of information that is essentially locked in back-office systems today. We want to help [companies] bring that information together in new applications. We want to help them expose the information to the consumer. The way we would propose doing that is …