Any Language
The .NET Framework enables use of any programming language, and for applications written in any programming languages to integrate deeply with each other, enabling current development skills to go forward without retraining.

Developed for the Internet Age
The .NET platform has been designed particularly for the Internet age. ASP.NET and web services enable programmers to build scalable applications for the future with less coding and better performance.

The .NET Framework was designed from the ground up to be an Internet computing environment. Its deep support for Web services using SOAP gives unparalleled interoperability with non-Windows environments. Microsoft is committed to the vision of delivering software as a service, and Web services are central to that vision. Web services are applications that expose their features over the Internet (or intranet) using standard Web protocols such as HTTP and XML. The .NET Framework makes exposing an application's features like this as easy as writing a single word in a developer's source code.

Reliability
The .NET Framework includes technologies to make applications more reliable. For example, memory, threads, and processes are managed by the .NET Framework to ensure that memory leaks don't occur. And ASP .NET monitors running Web applications and can automatically restart them at administrator-defined intervals.

Mobility
The .NET Framework makes large advances with regards to mobile devices. Integrated support for standards such as HDML and WML mean that applications built on the .NET Framework can target even cellular phones.

Manageability
The .NET Framework goes to incredible lengths to make it easy to deploy, run, and manage applications. From the "no-touch" deployment features that eliminate "DLL Hell," to the instrumentation built into every application designed for the .NET Framework, never has it been easier to keep applications alive and well.

Security
The .NET Framework includes an evidence-based security system designed for today's Internet environments. By collecting evidence about where an application came from, who created it, its digital signature, as well as what the application is trying to do and combining that evidence with a security policy, the .NET Framework's runtime environment can make very fine-grained decisions about whether to run an application. It can even "negotiate" with the application, for example, denying it the right to write to a protected directory and enabling the application to choose whether it will run without that permission.

Usability
Windows 2000 focused on usability by end users. The .NET Framework brings that usability to all developers. It supports the integration of multiple 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 and are therefore able to integrate with each other as never before.

Data Access
As the rest of the .NET Framework was redesigned for the Internet, so was the data access system. ADO.NET, a significant rework of the ADO model, is designed for today's Web based style of data access using XML and prepared for "disconnected" use with a high-speed local cache.

Hardware
The .NET Framework is designed to support not just the hardware of traditional Windows operating systems, but, with its sibling the .NET Compact Framework, also other smart devices such as mobile phones, enhanced televisions, and retail devices such as registers. The .NET Compact Framework is designed for downloading and running applications securely on a variety of CPUs and operating systems.