He was chief scientist at Sun Microsystems and head of Novell, both of which were crushed by Microsoft's dominant network of Windows developers.

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The company is integrating its Internet Explorer browser and Microsoft Network content into its Windows operating system, a process that will culminate with the "Active Desktop" planned for Windows 97, due out in a few months.

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For partners interested in trying and using the product internally, for free, you can sign up for the Cloud Essentials program Internal Usage Rights (IUR) software and visit Windows Intune on the Microsoft Partner Network.

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The bean counters like the fact that you can write an application once and then, with little expense and effort, modify it to run on a whole universe of Microsoft systems from the corporate network level (Windows NT) down to a single set-top box (Windows CE).

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In his previous company, Valence Research, Bain developed a distributed Web load-balancing software solution that was acquired by Microsoft and is now called Network Load Balancing within the Windows Server operating system.

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Microsoft officials say it will leverage its existing developer network, plus the mashup newbies, with its forthcoming Windows Live product.

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