The Internet has transformed from a mere publishing medium to an important communication and business facility. Among the many vendors that provide web-based solutions, multi-tiered system architecture became extremely popular. Developing with multiple tiers increases the scalability, performance, and reliability of distributed applications. Server components can be distributed across any number of servers to boost system availability. Rapid modification to these components is possible when business rules or economic conditions dictate. And the location-independence of these components allows system administrators to easily reconfigure system load. The challenge to IT professionals today is to efficiently develop and deploy applications for use on both corporate intranets and over the Internet. Among multi-tiered system architecture, three-tiered client/server architecture provides an environment which supports all of the benefits of both the one-tiered approach and the two-tiered approach while supporting the goals of a flexible architecture.   .NET Microsoft defines .NET as the web services strategy to connect information, people, systems, and devices through software. Integrated across the Microsoft platform, .NET technology provides the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, security-enhanced solutions with Web services. .NET capitalizes on an agile architecture based on web services that integrates internal and external applications while leveraging existing investments in the Windows space. It is also important to note that organizations leverage their existing resource skill set by having the ability to code in a variety of languages augmented by built-in components and tools. By enabling applications to share data across different hardware platforms and operating systems, web services provide many benefits like opening the door to new business opportunities by making it easy to connect with partners, delivering dramatically more personal, integrated experiences to users through the new breed of smart devices, shorter development cycles, and increasing revenue streams by enabling businesses to easily make their own Web services available to others. Finally, there are significant system management related advantages, that span from performance to reliability and security. Performance of the applications is improved due to integration to Windows, better managed system resources, increased reliability and role based security which provides better access control. back to Development   Trademark Acknowledgements Any company, product or service names are trademarks or service marks of their respective companies.