It was all about showing how network enabled and service oriented your were. Back in those days people were still pushing XML web services, SOAP and UDDI like

It was all about showing how network enabled and service oriented your were. Back in those days people were still pushing XML web services, SOAP and UDDI like it was the goodest thing possible. .NET was about showing how everything .net was all those things, kinda. Basically marketing meets tech hype 101.