This post was written by Cesar De la Torre Llorente, a member of the .NET Marketing team. Cesar provides guidance on .NET to customers and to sales, marketing, and support professionals at Microsoft.

We just released a new guide that provides a global and broad picture of Microsoft development technologies for business applications. You can learn more at our .NET Technology Guidance site, or download the .NET Technology Guide for Business Applications directly.

This guide is primarily intended for decision makers, architects, and developers who are responsible for selecting technologies and patterns for their business applications. It provides both background information and recommendations that will help you during your software planning process. The guide focuses on business applications but will also be useful for developers who are building other types of software.

The Microsoft portfolio of development technologies is pretty large and applicable to many software development scenarios across different industries. It is also continuously evolving and growing. The technology guide helps you drill down to the information and recommendations that apply to your applications.

The document provides guidance for both established and emerging application patterns. In particular, emerging patterns place a heavy emphasis on cloud services and multi-platform device clients.

• Established application patterns: These include client/server applications and web applications optimized for desktop browsers. They act as foundational applications and are heavily centered on existing business processes.
• Emerging application patterns: Multi-devices and the cloud are emerging as technology enablers for new applications. They complement the established patterns by extending the applications to focus on the end user.

The technology guide covers a broad spectrum of software development options that focus on business applications. It is written as a reference, so you can go straight to the area you are interested in.

Please do take a look at the technology guide. We’d like to know if you find it helpful. If the document doesn’t cover your business application scenario or differs from your experience, please tell us, either in the comments below or in email. We’d like to make sure that we’re providing full guidance across the spectrum of business application options.