[warfangle]

How was it at near-platform-universality and secure HTTP transmission?

[jacques_chester]

Windows was the near-universal platform and fairly sophisticated networking ability was inbuilt.

[coldtea]

You mean getting something else (that's orthogonal) in exchange, justifies a regression to pre-90's in other areas?

[mickeyp]

Plus it was trivial to make n-tier architectures. Tying it to the web was quite easy too, and there were components out there that made data interchange via HTTP trivial - like SOAP.