In his remaks to the Microsoft CEO Summit last week Bill Gates spoke about Business Impact
That's where these underlying technologies like Web services and XML are finally reaching the maturity that you can expect that all of this really does come together, that it's not super fragmented in terms of where you need to go, literally based on who you are in the organization, with the software we'll have by next year you'll just sit down and you'll navigate into the project that you care about, to the customers that you care about, and you won't even know exactly which of these backend sources that information is coming from.
Steve Ballmer made similar comments last week when asked about RSS, he believes in the power of XML and Microsoft is investing heavy in XML Web Services.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer understand that RSS is contentious and the day ATOM 1.0 launches RSS will be legacy code. Over the past year the ATOM group has been reaching agreement on a standard for syndication, but at the same time there has been an Astroturf campaign to saddle us with RSS 2.0 for eternity. Two bloggers link back to each other day after day proclaiming the Good News about RSS and anyone who rows downstream merrily, merrily with them in their dream. They link to PR parrots who sing the same reframe, anything to stop the conversation that will lead to the conclusion that ATOM is inevitable. ATOM is an upgrade, it is so clear and simple; an effort to create a standard in an area that up till now has been fractious.