And if he's able to back up the implicit claim that the AS/400 platform is so cheap when the "hard work begins", I know more than a couple of people that would love to have a chat with him, or at least get the prices he getting/offering.

My jaw is still on the floor. That entire article reeks of uninformed, all too typical anti-Microsoft FUD. He fails to back up any of his statements with real experience, references, or even the hint of a logical argument.

"Duhh, Microsoft bad. CICS good. Duhhh, web services bad. AS/400 good. Duhh..."

However, the most groundbreaking statement has to be: "A recent Gartner report said companies planning to move their old programs to .Net can expect to pay 40 percent to 60 percent of the cost of developing the programs in the first place."

Wha-wha-WHAT?!? You mean I am going to have to invest time, money, and resources to migrate my applications to a newer technology? I guess this comes as a surprise to a guy who lives in a world void of new technology...

My jaw is back in position.

It sad but true that when you read an article either online or in a magazine that is written by a journalistrather than people who earn their living by building applications you expect a certain lack of understanding. However, it says that this guy works in the industry so you would expect better research before he wrote his piece. It is abundantly apparent that he has no clue about XML, Web services or .Net. I have an ASP.NET that retrieves information from our SAP system and was very simple to build. I didn't see any Vendor lock in there. All the arguements he tries to use against .Net could be used against Java and J2EE but funnily enough he does not point that out....I wonder why.

I think Martin has it 100% correct. Those of us who know better are too busy making a living knowing better while those that don't know any better are journalists (with exceptions, of course).

I'd like to know what WS compatible client out there can't get my RSS feed from my web service. It's running on .NET.