Many web site owners start their first site under a unix/linux hosting plan but certain scripts and applications that they may want developed can be better developed or may have already been developed for a windows environment.

A windows environment is a windows server which will typically run IIS(internet information server), the windows equivalent of Apache(apache is an open source server software).

It is possible to run certain windows type pages on an apache server for example Frontpage extensions if the server allows it but for full-blown windows applications it is necessary to get a dedicated windows host.

Many top quality hosting companies provide Windows Web Hosting in addition to Unix web hosting so if you have an account with them already you can simply upgrade or set up a windows based account.

What is .net? 

.NET is a relatively new protocol released by Microsoft, that allows distributed software applications and reusable code from various libraries. It all sounds very technical but if your application is going to make use of .NET technologies you will require a Windows Web Host with the .NET framework installed.

.NET technology opens up a whole plethora of web based application power. Once again this article is not designed to go into it, but if you are being consulted by an IT developer you should understand that your application will require windows hosting if you are going down the .NET road 

Databases are another area that will require windows web hosting. Especially if you are using Microsoft Access Databases in your hosting environment. A unix/linux host usually uses MySQL or other open source databases. 

Asp and Asp.net 

Asp stands for Active Server Pages and is the Microsoft equivalent of PHP(hypertext preprocessor protocol) and python and perl. In simplistic terms all these programming languages allow you to run code on your server and output results to your end users - running the code before the browser displays the information. This allows powerful "back-end" operations to occ