Improved Reliability
The .NET Framework takes the core achievements originally made in Windows 2000 and brings them to new levels. With advanced ways of monitoring the health of running applications, as well as isolating applications from each other, applications built to the .NET Framework stay up-and-running longer than ever before.

Increased Performance
Thanks in part to advanced compilation and caching techniques, server applications have never been faster than with the .NET Framework and Microsoft ASP.NET technology. Customers who have moved from ASP to ASP.NET are seeing significant increases in speed on the order of 300- to 500-percent improvements.

Developer Productivity
Developers of all backgrounds are finding that they can rapidly get up to speed on the .NET Framework. The intuitiveness of the programming model, the amount of code already provided in the class libraries, and the amount of work handled behind the scenes by the .NET Framework in areas such as memory management has enabled .NET Framework developers to reap huge productivity gains.

Powerful, Granular Security
The .NET Framework code access security technology was designed for today's Internet environments. The .NET Framework can collect evidence about where an application originates, who creates it, what is its digital signature, and what the application is trying to do. The .NET Framework runtime environment can then combine that evidence with administrator-set or default security policies to make fine-grained decisions about whether to run an application or allow an application to access a particular resource. It can even "negotiate" with the application, for example, denying it the permission to write to a protected directory and enabling the application to choose whether it will run, given that it has been denied that permission.

Integration with Existing Systems
The .NET Framework COM Interop technology generates a wrapper around your existing COM components and Windows–based applications (such as Microsoft Office), enabling you to program against them as though they were originally written using the .NET Framework. Applications built using the .NET Framework can connect with existing systems and packaged applications—regardless of their underlying platform—via XML Web services or via other system-specific connectors. Finally, the Visual Basic Upgrade Tool, available with Visual Studio .NET, and the Java Language Conversion Assistant, help to convert your existing Microsoft Visual Basic® 6.0 and Microsoft Visual J++® code to run on the .NET Framework.

Ease of Deployment
The .NET Framework goes to incredible lengths to make it easy to deploy, run, and manage applications. Application isolation and automatic version control of components can help prevent versioning conflicts. Applications built using the .NET Framework can be deployed to a client or server machine simply by copying the application directory to the target machine—no registration is required. Furthermore, with no-touch deployment, Windows–based applications can now be deployed and updated simply by copying the necessary components to a Web server that can be accessed by your end-users.

Mobility Support
The .NET Framework provides one unified programming model for developing smart client and Web applications for both personal computers (PCs) and mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones.

Native XML Web Service Support
The .NET Framework was designed from the ground up to support XML Web services, a model for distributed computing in multiple environments based on standard protocols such as XML, SOAP, and HTTP. XML Web services can be used to integrate applications running on different platforms, or to offer software as a service. With the .NET Framework, an application can be transformed into an XML Web service with just one simple line of code.

Support for over 20 Programming Languages
The .NET Framework supports the integration of over 20 programming languages in a way unimagined previously, enabling developers to choose the right programming language for the task at hand. All programming languages target a single, extensive, and extensible set of class libraries. Components written in different languages supported by the .NET Framework can interact seamlessly, with no COM plumbing required.

Flexible Data Access
The .NET Framework technology for interacting with data, Microsoft ADO.NET, is designed for today's Web-based style of data access. Using ADO.NET, developers have the option of working with a platform-neutral, XML-based cache of the requested data, instead of directly manipulating the database. This approach to data access frees up database connections and results in significantly greater scalability.