Windows Communication Foundation, for its part, enables development of secure SOA, said Roxe said.

Microsoft is making available Visual Studio 2005 extensions for the .Net Framework 3.0, featuring plug-ins and templates to enable developers to leverage Visual Studio 2005 to build .Net Framework 3.0 applications.

Microsoft also daid on Monday that it is releasing Beta 2 of its ASP.Net AJAX Extensions and the Microsoft AJAX Library, collectively known as ASP.Net AJAX and formerly codenamed "Atlas."

"ASP.Net AJAX in simple terms is a technology for building rich, expressive, interactive applications on the Web, AJAX-enabling Web sites in simple terms," said Brian Goldfarb, group product manager for Microsoft .Net. The second beta, accessible , features bug fixes and an updated progress bar control. The final version of Microsoft's AJAX technology is set for the end of 2006.

A user of the technology said it helped his company, Burton Snowboards, implement a Web site that has boosted sales. "We were able to easily create some of the functionality that users were demanding," such as easier access to video and photography and reduce navigation time, said Ben Noonan, Internet project and development manager at Burton.