A common methodology to evaluate solution requirements against product capabilities will go a long way towards producing consistent, reliable results. Instead of being biased towards one product for every solution, or simply being unaware of a better match in another software offering, we can select the best software depending on its key capabilities for our client's solution.

In the next set of chapters, we'll introduce you to these core Microsoft application platform technologies and give you a taste as to what they are good at. While these primers are no more than cursory introductions to the products, they should give you the background necessary to understand their ideal usage scenarios, strengths, and weaknesses.

Later in this book, when we discuss different Microsoft applications and technologies, we shall build a taxonomy of Microsoft products, which will help architects navigate in the ocean of software tools.